March 18, 2018

Ash: This weekend has been a dream!  We had a four day vacation so of course we left our city to explore more of China!  First things first, we jumped on a bus and drove to the train station for 15 minutes where we jumped on our first train.  That train ride lasted about an hour and took us into Guangzhou south, there we got on a metro and rode it for about 30 minutes and got off in Guangzhou.  In Guangzhou we got on our next train and that train ride was 14 hours!  On our 14 hour train ride I learned just how much I hated trains.  This particular train smelled like booty, cigarette smoke, body odor, squatters and of course noodles.  Imagine all those smells mixed, gross right!  Anyways on this long train ride they had people walking up and down for quite sometime selling snacks and fruit.  Part of their snack was really big cup noodles.  The best thing about that was that the train had boiling hot water dispensers so you could have yourself a nice little bowl of noodles.  The seats to this train were 90 degrees.  Basically they looked like a bunch of upside down capital T's lined up.  They were the most uncomfortable seats.  There's a bit of padding but your booty still went numb crazy fast, your lower back felt like crap and you just couldn't sleep.  I slept maybe a total of an hr and a half out of 14 hrs.  Let's just say it was rough and to top it all off I had to poop so dang bad that I had no other choice but to walk myself down the cigarette smoke filled walkway to the squatter.  This squatter has pee sprayed everywhere, no TP and nothing to wash hands  Of course when I went to the bathroom, that's when the train decided to hit a few bumps along the way.  I tinkled a bit on my shoes but thankfully poop went in.  Oh also the lady I was sitting next to fell asleep and fell over in me and slept on my shoulder for a good half hour and the couple in front of me kept smacking and chewing their gum like a couple of cows, my goodness gracious I thought being ran over by the train would be better than sitting another minute on the train!  Our destination was to Jangjiajie where we had planned to visit the Tianmen Mountains and Avatar Mountains.  After getting off the train we went straight to our first activity which was cable cars!  We rode the longest cable cars up the Tianmen Mountains, it was incredible!!  As green as it could get!  It was clear for a while and the we hit thick fog, it was actually pretty cool, just wished it wasn't so foggy the top when we got off.
We headed back down the mountain via bus and the road was a switch back the super sharp ones like you see in pictures.  That was a little rough but also crazy cool!  After all of that we jumped in a taxi and headed to Wulingyuan where we checked into our hostel and finally dropped all of our stuff off.  The taxi was a little car so we had 1 girl sitting in the front seat with her bag and then we had to cram 4 girls in the back with all of our stuff for an hr ish drive.  We had been hauling our backpacks full of stuff around the Tianmen Mountains after a long 14 hr train ride with no sleep.  Rough rough rough!! After dropping stuff off we went out for a bite to eat.  The girls are not as adventurous in what they eat as I am so they went to this place that had pizza and me and one girl went to some family kitchen looking hole in the wall.  OUR FOOD WAS AMAZING! We split fried rice with eggs and pork with hot peppers.  Oh my gosh it was delish, and super cheap!  It cost us about $2.50 each and the other girls spent about $6 each.  They said their pizzas were super small and obviously frozen pizzas.  They should have listened to me in the first place, serves them right.
Anyways, the next day we slept in until about 9 because you can't sleep longer than that on a wooden board.  We grabbed something for breakfast and headed straight to the Avatar Mountains!  We took the route that required us to hike.  We thought eh no big deal we can hike a bit, the mountains are pretty what the heck let's do it!  The hike turned out to be 8,000 stairs!! Oh my gosh I thought we were going to die.  They were steep stairs that were never ending!  The hike was very VERY pretty and you could see a lot of the Avatar Mountains until we got halfway up, then the fog started to get thick and we couldn't see anything anymore.  We finally made it to the to and what did we see?  McDonald's, gross but we were thankful for something to eat.  At McDonald's we met some Americans.  We have never been happier to see white people with hair other than dark and people who spoke English.  They live in Shanghai.  We talked for a bit and they gave us some good info about Beijing and Shanghai for when we go on our long vacation.  They also informed us that we could have taken a bus and cable cars to the top which we didn't know about.  Slightly bugged but also not.  We decided we were really glad we did our 8,000 stairs (217 floors) hike!  It was very pretty and an amazing experience to hike the Avatar Mountains.  We did take the cable car and bus back down.  By then it was dinner time so we decided that we'd go back to the little place we went to before and the girls decided that I'm smart and they'd actually listen to me.
Our 3rd day we woke up to rain.  Quite a bummer but it was ok.  We had to check out and had to take all of our stuff with us.  We went to Jhangjiajie National Forest Park and we took a boat ride around the most beautiful lake I think I have ever seen!  The only problem was that we had to hike for maybe 20 minutes in the rain with all of our stuff.  Thank goodness for umbrellas but my shoes were soaked through and I was freezing cold.  Our boat ride turned out to be a private tour because nobody else had been in line when we got on!  We went to the next place which was a cave.  The girls were really wanting to do it but it was a 2 hour hike to the cave and of course we still had all of our stuff and our shoes were soaked through.  I told them that I was not going to suffer for hours all for a ave, no thank you!  Turned out that it wouldn't have worked out anyways because we had to catch our 13 hr train ride back home.  So we didn't do that cave, and I'm kinda really glad we didn't because that would have been miserable.  Despite all of the challenges, a 13 hr train ride and being cold and wet, we don't regret anything.  It was incredible to see what we saw.  God's creations blow my mind away!!  Oh also we saw monkeys at the base of the Avatar Mountains.  They would walk right next to you, kinda freaky but super cool!
Ash:  Oh and at the Tianmen Mountains we walked on a glass road clear at the top.  Freaky freaky!!
Dad: What an awesome trip you had
Ash: It's unreal that I'm able to see and experience things that most people are not.
Dad: It makes me happy that you like to explore and learn about other cultures and what God has created for us.  The world is an amazing creation and some of the people/cultures are too.
Ash: The only issue with it is that it makes for an expensive hobby!
Dad: That is does
Ash: I'm excited for you to experience China.  It's quite the country!
Dad: I'm looking forward to it
Dad: Is your air mattress still working out?
Ash: Yes! I'm not sure how these girls can sleep on these wooden boards.  2 nights at the hostel we were at was bad enough.  I woke up with a sore tail bone and sore shoulder.  Very grateful for my air mattress!
Aunt Jodi: Wow Bina that's awesome.  Beautiful pictures
Mum: That's way cool Ashie poo.  I'm so so so glad you get to do this!  Thank you for sending your news and all these photos.
Ash: I have nothing but time to share!  I'm stuck on another 13 hr train ride.
Aunt Jodi: You need to bring bum wipes and hand sanitizer with you on those trips.
Ash: Oh I do, don't you worry! Too nasty not too!!
Aunt Jodi: And ear plugs so you don't have to listen to the cow people chew
Aunt Jodi: It seems like Asians make a lot of noise when they eat.
Mum:  Oh ear plugs.  Ash we didn't think about ear plugs for you.  We can bring some.  Is there anything else you wish you had?  Sounds like that air mattress turned out to be a treasure!
Aunt Jodi: You can get a big pack of ear plugs at Walmart in the pharmacy area.
Dad: Ash, in the little makeup bag I got from Delta that I gave you has earplugs
Ash: Boy do they ever!  They slurp their noodles like a bunch of pigs, chomp their gum like cows and smack everything else!  So insanely disgusting and annoying.  My gosh this trip is sure testing my patience.  I was about ready to smack the couple on my first train for chewing their gum and this dude behind me chewing down on his seeds.
Ash: Does it have earplugs?! I will look.  That'd be super nice to have.
Nonny: Ashie, awesome experiences!  And aren't you so glad that you have adventurous parents and you've had so many opportunities to travel and explore.  The ladies that I traveled with in Mexico brought TP and sanitizer everywhere.  Thank you for sharing
Ash: I'm thankful for it.  It's helped me be adventurous, and I love it!  Yeah, I bring t issues and hand sanitizer everywhere too!
Aunt Jodi: That's too adventurous
Mum: Gross dear
Mum: But i'd eat the white one since it seems to be the white sheep of the family.
Dad:  I'm at my taxi drivers house for lunch
Ash: That's a bit sketch father
Mum:  added Wes and Cass
Dad: He stands at about 4ft 8" tall
Ash: It's funny looking!
Dad:  It is.  There was a sister that was probably 3 inches shorter than him at church.  He is the Bishop in his ward and it appears to be a primary program each week with adults.  He can barely look over the podium because the podiums don't go up or down.  So you see from about his bottom lip to the top of his head when he's at the podium conducting.