Today started a little later as I decided to wake up only at 7am. As I would be returning to the same hostel tomorrow night, I left my backpack in the hostel and only went out with my waistpack and camera gear. Hailed a taxi and off I went to Zhangjiajie Scenic Area Ticketing Entrance. When I was there, i was accosted by quite a few guides and as I spoke to one of them, I was convinced that I should hire him. His rates was only 100rmb per day and he was a native that grew up in the mountains. As an officially licensed guide, he would be reliable.
After getting my ticket that costed 248rmb (so expensive!!), we headed in and discussed my route for the two days. We would explore the entire mountain top today and head down to the Golden Whip River trail tomorrow. As I found out, there are free tourist buses plying the mountain top and it was much easier getting around than expected. The tour guide made moving around easy as he was extremely familiar with the area and would even bark at other tourists when they blocked up the area.
Taking a tourist bus from the entrance, we headed to the lower station of the Yangjiajie Cableway. The ride up took about 7 minutes and costed 76rmb. My guide explained to me how the local government supported the natives by restricting guides and ticket seller jobs to the natives. Going up the Cableway, the view was pretty awesome. However as we reached the top, fog started to envelop the entire mountain top.
As we walked from viewpoint to viewpoint, all we could see was fog. It was rather disappointing as I was hoping to catch the beautiful geological formations that Zhangjiajie is famous for. Lunch was had at a local restaurant and it was not cheap at all. However I ate as much as I could so that I could skip dinner since there's not many places with decent food on the mountain top.
Continuing on, we went from Yangjiajie to Tianzi Mountain. The afternoon was spent camping at a local shop. My guide chatted with one of the locals there while I was observing an ongoing mahjong by a few other locals. I reckon I took more photographs of spiders and their webs than of the geological formations in the entire scenic area. Eventually, we headed to my hostel.
Turns out the hostel is really crap. There was no insulation or heating so the room is as cold as outside, just without wind. The bed had insects about and the TV was down. It's 7pm and I'm in the room till tomorrow. I offered to share the room and the queen sized bed with my tour guide as the lousy hostel owner had no bed for him. Usually for tour guides, the locals will offer them a bed for free or at an extremely cheap rate when they are accompanying their clients.
I'm really thankful for this guide as we chat quite well and easily. As we spent time together today, he shared with me about his family and his life in Zhangjiajie and we also talked about various topics such as security, lifestyle and even education of our two countries.
Can't wait to get out of this terrible hostel room tomorrow morning. What a disappointment. I booked for two nights here but they somehow only have my booking for tomorrow night, which I had forfeited as I had moved forward my zhangjiajie scenic area visit earlier by one day. Once I'm back in Singapore, a complaint awaited agoda.com, together with a scathing review for this hostel.
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