Beautiful Bama!
Trip Start
Mar 16, 2010
1
3
Trip End
Mar 27, 2010
Bama, Guizhou, China
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Our first stop was Bainiao Yan. We got on the only bus route within Bama and told them where we wanted to go. They dropped us off, and we were able to figure out our way to the cave, although with some difficulty. Bainiao Yan is a cave that you take a boat through. Frommers makes it seem like no one goes there, but Bama has really become a tourist attraction for Chinese. There are a high number of centarians in Bama and it seems like lots of people go there to learn how to live longer. Our tour had two boats full of people, and the whole way they were giving a tour. At one point the woman in front of us told us that they were saying that the water was safe to drink. People started filling their water bottle from the cave water. I decided to try a little, and it tasted great! (This is coming from a girl who is quite picky about the taste of water!) She said that the minerals will help your brain. The cave was beautiful and it was by far the coolest cave I've seen (although I'm no cave expert either!) On our way out, everyone started singing, I'm guessing it was the national anthem, and that was pretty cool too. Check out the video!
When we got out of the cave, we decided to follow the recommended hike in the Frommers book. It was kind of hard to follow and we made our own side trips. But the route they recommended taking was much longer than it seemed. I would say we were hiking around Bama for at least 2 hours. We went through "Long Life Villiage" but didn't see any of the old people that the area is known for. Really, what suprised me about Bama was all the children! Since most people are only allowed to have one kid, I haven't seen many kids in China. But in Bama there were so many! Almost every group of people we saw had at least one kid under 3 years old with them. I pointed it out to Alex early on and he finally agreed with me when we were in the square and there were literally 3 big areas of just children. I know that minorities can have more than one child, so I think that might have been what was going on.
On our second day in Bama, we started at Baimo Dong (took the same bus, it was just a bit further than the first cave) which according to Frommers had worms hanging from the ceiling at the entrance and you have to wear helmets to go through it. Well, its been tourist-ified. There is a path leading through, and plenty of colorful lights shining on the structures. We also had to stay with a tour group, which wasn't really what we wanted to do (especially since we couldn't understand anyway!) But there were some really good signs in there! "Do not doodle in me, I love clean" Alex and I got a kick out of it.
From Baimo Dong, we followed the Frommer's recommendation to Poyue, the town next to the cave. We were hoping to take the hike that it talked about, but I'm pretty sure they were layering bricks over the path that they told us to take! There was so much construction in the area, and you could tell that Poyue is going to be much bigger very soon. It's kind of a shame because the area is so naturally beautiful, and now there was a lot of garbage in the water and structures covering the scenery. I'm glad we were able to see it when we did, because I'm guessing it will be much different within a few years.
