Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

What does one do when he deeply misses a beautiful friend?
He jumps on a bus and heads across to Jiangxi Province to give her a big squeeze!

Over the past month Ting Ting and I have been trying so hard to get together and spend some time but due to weather and her work schedule it just hasn’t gone our way. That was until Thursday night when I received a call from her telling me that she had the weekend off. By Friday lunch time I was expecting a call informing me that her boss had thrown her back on the KTV work horse for the weekend.

Three in the afternoon found Shaowu city in my buses rear view mirror.
Three hours later little Zixi city was filling my buses windscreen.

To the amusement of everyone at the bus station Ting Ting and I were soon jumping up and down with huge smiles on our faces and after checking into the hotel we spent the night catching up over street side beer and BBQ with several of her friends followed by a relaxing foot massage.

Zixi town has a population of twenty to twenty five thousand and its main attraction is Dajueshan or Big Feeling Mountain which, even though wasn’t anywhere near the top of my list of amazing mountains, I still had a wonderful time with Ting Ting. We rose around midday, grabbed a cab and ten minutes later we were being whizzed part way up the mountain in a 'stretch’ golf cart. As Ting Ting doesn’t own any form of comfortable walking shoes (unless you are a mountain goat and can climb and walk for hours in high heels) we ended up taking the chair lift to the top.

Thankfully Ting was in fear of her life as comforting her kept my vertigo beast at bay.

Once at the top we made our way around to the small temple and once through the front wooden façade I found the rest of the temple was housed in a very comfortable and cool cave. After ordering a simple lunch of assorted fresh vegetables we joined a small group of young local Chinese students who were out for the day enjoying each other’s company and warm sunshine. The temple has a history of over one thousand years and was sadly destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt not long after sanity once again took hold of most Chinese.

One can’t help but wonder at what China could have offered the world if they didn’t freak out for a time, destroy everything around them and then call it the Cultural Revolution….I’m glad we had the 50’s & 60’s instead!

While eating we found out that it is actually possible to sleep at the temple as they have several rooms available for small price…maybe next time! We spent the next few hours slowly meandering around the mountain top and then sadly (due to Ting heels) caught the chair lift back down. When we reached the chairlift station we met two ladies who had been eating lunch beside us and found out that it only takes around an hour to walk down the mountain.

As one was very pregnant and wearing flip flops I also doubt that it is a difficult task.

I ended up walking from the ‘station’ down to the entrance which took around half an hour but during the summer months you can actually grab an extra ticket and make your way down in a rubber boat. I don’t think there would be any ‘white water’ but I’m definitely going to return and give it a go.

Beers N Noodles toya…..shane
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The soundtrack to this entry was by Motley Crue
The album was ‘Shout at the Devil’
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