Bingyugou

Our first trip out of Dalian. We all piled into our van along with Mr. Li, who is our driver and his wife. Because we are responsible for paying for his travel expenses when we he drives us out of town we chose to invite his wife along for the journey as well. Mr. Li works for us 7 days a week 12-14 hours a day, we wanted him to have some time to spend with his wife. We have tried to give him a day/days off, but his monthly salary is so low that he prefers to work as much overtime as possible.

The drive through the countryside was beautiful. It is very lush and green with rolling hills. Every square inch of land had something planted on it. Dispersed amongst the farms were small traditional Chinese homes.

We arrive at Bingyugou and were amazed by the change in scenery. The small rolling hills were replaced by a lush landscape with towering mountains, limestone cliffs and deep green canyons with water flowing through them. This was replaced by another type of scenery. Tour buses loaded with tourists and guides hollering in Chinese through megaphones. There were amusement park rides and of course vendors peddling quality crafted Chinese goods. If Bingyugou were in the US we are fairly certain that it would have National Park Status. It is protected by the Chinese Government… they just have a different way of protecting things. While we would have loved to hop in a kayak and paddle down river, our only option was to hop on you guessed it a tour boat. The tour boat was of course equipped with a tour guide and a noisy megaphone blaring in a language we don’t yet understand.




Well I can’t finish this post without commenting on the hotel. Oh the hotel… In most places in the US $140 night will buy you a pretty decent hotel room. It may not be the nicest but it will usually be clean. In all fairness I had been forewarned that this hotel was not very nice. However the description I was given did not do it justice. Where do I begin… I will start in the bathroom., with the crushed cigarette butt on the bathroom floor and I must not forget the ½ used shampoo bottles on the counter and the toilet lid that was on the floor. The worst part was the shower… The shower head was coming out of the wall behind the door, directly under it is an electrical outlet to plug in the water heater. We decided that none of us needed a shower that badly! Miraculously the bedding was clean (the beds were just as hard as every other bed in China) The floors were so gross I debated at one point laying the clean towels out all over the floor because I did not want to walk across it with my socks on! This high quality establishment earned 4 stars in a travel guide somewhere, where and by whose judgment I am not sure.




In closing I will post some Chinglish for you to all enjoy! This sign reads:
A rock convex at the right of ying na lake looks like a giant cock facing an older monk and a fragile boy, this is the purported immortals quarters. The giant cock is chicken immortals, the older monk visited this place so it is termed "celestial quarters".



In spite of it all we had a good time, we were just happy to come home to our nice clean house!