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We were cold here! And we were ripped off by a cab driver but we got back at him.

Zhaoqing - Xing Yan Binguan Thursday Feb 1 to Saturday Feb 3

On arrival, Gerry did some scouting and then came back and found a taxi driver willing to take us to the Xing Yan Binguan using the meter. One guy had asked for 25Y which Gerry thought far too much for the estimated distance. Imagine our surprise therefore when the meter turned out to read Y25 on arrival! Still, we were there and the room we were shown was bright and clean and had a modern bathroom and a nice view of the some of the crags. The only problems were that there was no heating and no hot water during most hours. It was turned on only from 7p.m. until midnight.

We checked in and went for a walk in the rain and then came back and ate a reasonable dinner at the hotel restaurant that was empty but for us and the staff. Back in the room we started to realize how cold it was and so Jan went down and asked for a second quilt which they eventually brought to her. That night Jan had a blanket, two quilts, and a hooded fleece on to keep warm.

Friday

Weather was terrible so we stayed in bed late and got up to have a late breakfast in the hotel dining room. Decided weather was too bad to go to the park, so we set off to walk into town. As we walked we learned for sure that the taxi driver the previous night had cheated us royally and determined to go and find him and ask for our money back.

Our first stop in town, therefore was the bus station and there we were lucky enough to come across him as his next customers were loading their bags into his cab. I went up to the driver’s window while Gerry started videoing the events. He got out of the car to talk to me and then saw Gerry videoing and motioned to him to stop. I asked him in Chinese why he was afraid and he suddenly understood what was happening, whipped out his wallet and gave Gerry Y50 saying, in English, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He knew that he had been found out and wanted us to go away quickly. Nonetheless Gerry continued videoing for a little while, making sure that he got the license plate number. He was obviously worried. Hopefully, that is the last time he tries to cheat a foreigner.

We walked around town, visiting the Cheng Xi pagoda and the Yuejiang Tower that had a nice museum inside (see Gerry’s photos) before finding a KFC that we chose for dinner so that we could be warm and have a nice clean loo. It is so nice, for example, to find soap in the toilets! After supper, we walked up Renmin Lu and checked out a couple of hotels. It was time to move to warmer accommodations. Our pick was the Hua Qiao (Overseas Chinese) hotel, which promised us a room at Y250. Across the street we found a taxi driver to take us back to the Xing Yan and asked him if he would come and pick us up the next evening at 5 p.m. He said yes, and we wondered if he had really understood our Chinese, if he would show up, and how much he would charge us.

Another cold night in the hotel.
Zhaoqing - Hua Qiao Hotel Saturday, Feb 3 - Wednesday, Feb 7

Saturday: We got up late again. Packed our bags, checked out of the hotel, and stored our bags with them until the evening. We ate a meal at the hotel and walked down the street to the park gate and paid our Y50 each for the privilege of walking up and down steep stairs in the rain! But it was not unpleasant once our efforts had warmed us up and the scenery was indeed quite pretty if you could abstract the urban development from the background and imagine bright blue skies and sunshine.

From noon until five p.m. we explored the park, managing to scale only three of the seven crags in that time and one or two temples. In one of the temples we bought two books about the park and the nearby city of Zhaoqing. The books were bi-lingual and had rather good photos, taken in much better weather than we had had.

When we got back to the hotel, we were pleased to find the taxi driver there.