BingYuGou

Since, it was National Day Vacation Week, it would have been a shame not to go somewhere. Myself and a friend of mine here decided to head off for a couple of days. I really hadn’t a clue where to go, so it was decided to go to a place called BingYuGou (冰峪沟), which can be translated directly as “Ice Valley Channel”. It’s a sort of rocky, gorgy, rivery place! Yes, you can see that my English has really come on, since coming to China!

Got a nice early (7:40am) bus from Dalian to ZhuangHe (庄河), which was about 2 hours away. We then got a minibus to BingYuGou. We didn’t really have any plan for accommodation or what we would do there. We were under the impression that there was a lot to see there! So, we arrived near the place anyway in the lovely warm sunshine. It has been cold in Dalian recently, so the heat was very welcome! The area around there was rich in farmland with lots of corn fields and other assorted crops. So, we decided to stay on one of the farms. As usual in China, there were plenty of people waiting outside where the bus stopped to get us to stay in their places. So, we went with this woman and saw what she had to offer. Well, you get what you pay for and we paid 15 yuan for a room. There was an outside toilet, which was a hole in the ground with a wall around it. There was a shower as well in an outhouse but we passed on that! The people there were very friendly and were glad of our business. We decided to head off after the rush of the weekend, so it wasn’t hard to find a place to stay.


I digress. So, of we went with full bellies to see what BingYuGou had to offer. We paid our ticket and got on a boat and travelled down the river gorge. The scenery was very impressive with rocky gorges on each side but also green grassy and forested bits. I like gong to places like this cos we don’t have this kind of scenery in Ireland.


We disembarked and decided to have a wander around. There were hills to be climbed so off we went. It was good to do a bit of exercise. I think we were in better shape than most of the other tourists, who were sweating and panting! There were some lovely views from the top of the hills.


Down below, in usual Chinese fashion, music was pumping out of everywhere. So much for the tranquillity of the countryside! We headed down and around to the main lake, where we took another nice lake cruise. More wonderful scenery. Some people call this the “Poor Man’s Yunnan” but I reckon it was as good as most things I saw in Yunnan!

We headed for Little Guilin (小桂林), which turned out to be a kids’ amusement place. Well, we amused ourselves on the swing-bridge and watched people crossing the river in the roly-poly thingy


The weather that day was lovely and warm but turned quite nippy in the evening, as the landlady had said. We headed back to the farm for a nice dinner and a beer. There were 2 westerners there. The landlord said the girl was American and the guy was from New Zealand. However, when I heard them talking, I heard a familiar Paddy accent! I went in to talk to them, and he was from Limerick and was teaching in Future School in Dalian! The American girl was teaching there as well. You meet Irish people everywhere!

So, the next day we decided to rise early so we could go to Dandong. To be continued…