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  Wuyuan, Jiangxi, China
Monday, May 23, 2011

The journey to Wuyuan was pretty epic involving a 20 hour train ride, a night in a hotel and then an early morning bus ride.  The train journey was really comfy - I could get used to lying in bed reading for 20 hours at a time!  Our stopover was in a fairly big town called Jingdenzhen, which isn't set up for tourism at all.  This meant we had a lot of fun in the restaurant trying to order food.  We ended up pointing at pictures of food on the walls but it turns out they were there for decoration, not because the restaurant cooked them!  That evening we got sent in circles in the pouring rain looking for an internet cafe to pay off the credit card bill before we got fined.  When we finally got a security guard to take us to one the owner refused to allow us on the computers - I'm pretty sure it was because we weren't Chinese and lost my cool for a bit shouting: "that's illegal in my country!"  (not that anyone could understand me!).  Michael thought I was mad!!!

We finally got to Wuyuan the next day and were quickly collared by a taxi driver who drove us to our first village.  Little Likeng wasn't as pretty as I'd expected but it was incredibly busy.  The place was full of Chinese tour groups who were each following a guide with a megaphone.  Not quite the peace and quiet we had hoped for!  After a stroll round the village we headed out into the countryside, which was completely deserted apart from a few farmers.  We walked around for about 2 hours and really enjoyed the luscious greenery covering everything around us.  That night we managed to order a good feast through the dictionary section of our guidebook.  We also got to use the internet in our guesthouse and the old boy was most amused by Michael's trainer blogs!

The next day another taxi driver found us and we did a tour of the remaining villages we wanted to see.   Our first two villages, Sixi and Yancun, were both really pretty with no other tourists around - the buildings were a very lived in grey/white colour and the layout of the village created lots of little alleyways to explore. The Rainbow Bridge at Qinghua was a bit disappointing, as they've built lots of concrete monstrosities behind it so the view is a bit crowded!  Our final stop, Big Likeng, was by far the best village.  There were farmers ploughing their fields with water buffalos, people milling around on errands, old boys and girls with incredibly wrinkled faces and thankfully no megaphones!  The scenery was even nicer than the day before with bigger mountains and even greener trees.  We wished we'd organised to do the 4 hour trek there instead of a brief visit but were really pleased we went. 

Our trip round the Wuyuan villages was not quite the gritty, rural experience we were expecting but the scenery around the villages was some of the best we've seen all year.  A definite Chinese highlight!

Jingdezhen hotels Slideshow Share

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The best 20 hour journey we've had	The sleeper train	Walking the water buffalo	The dogs don't stand a chance
The countryside	Nice fresh air	Fields	My ride is here   Comments!
Little Likeng village	The guest house	Entrance to Sixi village	Walking to Sixi
Farmers	The bridge at Sixi	Sixi bridge	Chooks
Sixi maze	A bicycle	Rainbow bridge	Waterwheel and rainbow bridge
Tour group on the way	Crazy tourists	Nice way to wash your veg	Big Likeng
Paddies and mountains	Big Likeng	Off piste	Paddies and mountains
Crazy trousers the kids wear with no nappies	Alley in Big Likeng	Where's Wally?

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