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De Tian Thursday, February 15 - Saturday, February 17 - Thursday
Nanning to De Tian

We had a very quick breakfast and then checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the bus station across town that would have a bus to De Tian. At the bus station we were happy to learn that a bus would leave in less than half an hour but not so happy to learn that it would only go as far as Da Xin. Expecting difficulty in finding a bus in Da Xin, we asked the ticket seller to write down on our ticket in Chinese “Please help us find the bus to De Tian”.

The bus was a bit of a surprise as it was very clean and modern and comfortable for such a backwoods kind of route. We each got a window seat and settled down for a delightful ride through some lovely scenery. More karst hills and picturesque rice-terraced valleys. When we got to Da Xin at about 1 p.m., the bus dropped some people off at a crossroad, but didn’t go into any bus station. 

Jan asked if we should get off here too, but the conductress said no, we would get off in 40 minutes. From that we guessed that they were going to take us to the junction of the road to De Tian, some 50km further than we had paid for. That was fine with us and was exactly what happened. So we found ourselves sitting with our bags at a T-junction hoping some kind of transportation would come by to take us to De Tian. We were not unhappy as the road was not busy, the scenery was lovely, it was warm and pleasant in the afternoon sunshine and we each had a book to read.

Eventually, after several false alarms, a minibus showed up and agreed to take us although they said they didn’t go as far as De Tian. We said fine, loaded our bags and were taken, as we learned, to Silong, about half way. In Silong, a sizeable village, we hired a tricycle taxi to take us the rest of the way. The ride took about a half hour more and climbed higher into the mountains through more and more lovely scenery.

Eventually, the driver stopped outside of a very grim-looking building that clearly had the characters Bin Guan on the front. Nevertheless there was no sign of a lobby and more important no sign of the waterfall. We had been led to believe by Matthew the CITS guy in Nanning that there was a hotel overlooking the falls. The driver also pointed out another building up the hill but muttered something about Y30 each. Wondering if that was what he was planning to charge us we got out of the taxi a little confused. Once out we found a road sign pointing on up the road to the waterfall a kilometer away. We decided we had nothing to lose and had the guy drive us on up the road to the other building.

There we found what we were looking for: the De Tian Mountain Villa (De Tian Shan Zhuang). It was just inside the gate to the De Tian park for which there was an admission of Y30 each. This solved the mystery of the driver’s comment. But before paying up, Jan went on to the hotel and verified that they had rooms, checked one out, and negotiated a 20% discount from the very high Y460 price. In retrospect, the room wasn’t worth that much and a lower price probably could have been had, but we were not about to walk away so leverage was lacking. Anyhow, after paying up, paying the taxi driver, and moving in it was rather nice to at last have a room with a real view, of the De Tian waterfall some 300m upstream.

First order of business was food as we hadn’t eaten, except for snackes since breakfast. We ate a reasonable meal in the dining room (Can Ting) and then set off for a short walk to help digest our meal. Gerry’s original intention, which I agreed with, was to just walk along the upper road that overlooked the falls and save exploring for the following day. However, unable to restrain his exploring instinct, pretty soon he was suggesting a short walk down to the river until we had explored amost the entire falls area.

But eventually, he did agree to tear himself away and as dusk fell we wandered back to our room for the night. One piece of good news was the temperature which was not as cold as we had feared. The bathroom, in spite of appearances, was a wet floor type, but at leat there was lashings of hot water. We slept that night with the drapes open, the better to admire the scenery the next morning. Here at the western edge of the Chinese standard time zone, day didn’t break until after 7.

Friday De Tian

We got up slowly and eventually made it to the Can Ting for breakfast and had a nice breakfast of boiled eggs and steamed buns stuffed with some kind of sweet paste, called Lin Yung Bao. After breakfast, we repaired to the room and read and played with photos for the rest of the morning. 

We ate lunch in the restaurant and then went for a walk down to the nearby village hoping to take the raft across the river into what we thought for sure was Vietnam. As expected, the locals refused to let us cross, so after watching the raft cross the river without us, we headed along the river bank towards the falls.

Soon after we got to the lower part of the falls, we came across a wooden signboard crudely painted in red that seemed to say that a fee of Y2 was required to cross the bamboo and wood bridge that was there. We had found a similar sign the previous evening but the ‘owner’ had waved us on. This time, Jan got out our Y30 park tickets to indicate that we had paid lots of money already and why did we have to pay more. They guy was about to argue when some Chinese arrived in uniform, talked to him and then waved us on after them. Nobody paid. It is hard to know for sure what was going on, but most probably, the park authorities wink at this extra revenue source for the local people. They have rafts also that will carry you across the bottom of the falls for which they charge up to Y5 a head and it seems that they build the walkways and levy a fee for them as well. Were we depriving these people of a reasonable livelihood or was this an example of petty corruption that China is trying to fight? Hard for us, with our limited Chinese, to figure out.

We worked our way up the side of the waterfall and in the end got back onto the upper road we hadwalked along the previous evening. We decided to follow it up the valley as far we could and were quickly disappointed to find that it ended only 100m further on. At that point there were a dozen stalls selling Vietnamese dried fruit and other products including perfume. Jan was happy to buy some perfume for a dollar and Gerry treated himself to a 20 cent roll of boiled sweets. 

Right by the end of the road, the stall-holders pointed out a stone that marked the official border between China and Vietnam. We took some photos and then started walking along a dirt path that paralleled the river for a ways towards a couple of old-fashioned water wheels visible by the river’s edge. The scenery was just lovely, as Gerry’s photos show. We came across several people working in the fields and rafting up the river and all responded to our hellos in what sounded like Vietnamese. Walking on we saw a bridge across the river and decided to make that our destination. When we got there, we met a middle-aged man wearing the once ubiquitous communist drab and from gestures and so on confirmed that we were indeed in Vietnam and that China was behind the nearest mountain. So there were no border patrols here! Doubtless the next time we come, there will be something more formal.

From there we wandered back to the hotel, and told them we wanted to leave the next day and could they help us get a bus to Da Xin. The receptionist said yes at 8 sharp down below there would be a bus. We arranged a 7:30 a.m. checkout then went back to the Can Ting for supper. On the way out, Jan talked to the waitress and asked her to arrange four boiled eggs and four buns for our breakfast to be ready at 7:30 so that we could take them away with us.

Cheng Zuo and Shi Lin Saturday, February 17

The bus showed up on time, but the breakfast didn’t. Nothing had been arranged and at 7:30 the cook was not even there. We gave up on breakfast and were happy to be on the bus and on the way to Da Xin. The ride once again was through the loveliest of scenery. The prettiest we had seen since Jiuhuashan and Huangshan in September-October.