The Dong and Winding Road ( Part Two)

Our journey that day was to leave Zhoaxing by taxi to a nearby village called Luoxiang (20 minutes away), catch a bus to Congjiang ( two hours) and then a bus to Rongjiang(three to four hours). The hours of travel seemed to match the kilometres, Lonely Planet suggested the drive from Zhaoxing to Congjiang was beautiful with "rolling hills and lush terraced rice fields, groves of tangerine trees and riverboats gliding along the turquoise waters", so, although we left Zhaoxing regretfully we were looking forward to the day.

We hit the first problem ten minutes out of Zhaoxing!!

I haven't mentioned the truck scene in rural China. The road building programme in China must be huge, because on every road travelled there is a constant stream of large dump type trucks filled with gravel or sand or rocks all destined, I presumed, for some road construction.

Zhaoxing, beautiful as it was, had these trucks continually rumbling down the main drag ( much, I might add, to the annoyance of many locals), shattering the peace. Ten minutes out of Zhaoxing, one of these trucks, a bright yellow one, had decided to perform a three point turn in a most unlikely section of the road. There appeared to be no earthly reason why he had chosen that exact spot, but he had managed to get himself wedged right across the road, tailgate against a hill and the nose of the truck perilously close to a drop.....not a huge drop but one nonetheless that would cause great damage to truck and driver should it go that way. The edge of the road was very crumbly!!!.

We spent the next hour watching a gang of willing helpers...the vehicles either side of the truck were beginning to add up.......try to shore up the verge at the front of the truck so that he could edge forward to give him space to complete the turn. On more than one occasion he nearly lost it.

It was, as you can imagine, quite a performance and when at last he successfully completed his thousand point turn, the crowd erupted.

The truck driver revved off rather sheepishly I thought...you gotta wonder what in Pete's sake he had been thinking about in the first place!

The taxi dropped us off in Luoxiang, on a nondescript corner and intimated the bus to Conjiang would stop there. The girl who owned the corner dress shop concurred and indicated it might be there in about 40 minutes, gave us a little stool and we became the centre of attention for a while in this dusty little town.

The bus duly arrived and we scampered on.

These local buses are great. They each have a "conductor" who is often a young woman, who is a spruker for the bus, getting as many customers on as allowed ( we had been stopped a number of times by police to check the bus and we had presumed it was to stop overcrowding), organising luggage, which always includes some sort of grain and livestock and usually goes in the bus aisles, and generally keeping control of the bus. The buses are normally small and everyone has a good old chat and a laugh or two...you would think they all know each other, and of course much of the initial talk revolves around the two foreigners on board.

As the guide book said the trip to Congjiang was quite pretty and we actually arrived quicker than anticipated!!!!. The mini bus to Rongjiang was pulling out as we arrived so our packs were thrown inside and we scrambled on. The bus wasn't quite full so we did a few streets in town to pick up...the young girl conductor on this bus was pretty and had attitude and soon enticed a man and his wife and his three covered bird cages and two large flattish garbage bags on board and we were away.

The atmosphere was jovial. Everyone got a really good laugh when Mandy ( inquisitive as ever ) uncovered one of the bird cages and screamed as the bird inside attacked her prying fingers.......yeah they all thought that was hilarious.......kept them going for quite a while!!

Everything was hunky dory, when an hour out of Congjiang we hit the second problem.......three quarters of the road had disappeared!!!

A bridge had collapsed and a line of traffic was piled up either side. It was pretty obvious there was no way ahead, but it took about a half an hour of looking and discussion before we were all ushered back on board, did a successful three point turn and headed back the way we had come.......the whole way we had come.

We had been following the river and it was pretty obvious to me that the only other route was over the mountains.......again! Yep, we drove the hour back to Congjiang and then proceeded to switchback our way up yet another range. The problem was that, of course, every truck in the province (it seemed) now had to take this route. They were slow, we needed to pass them, and the road was extremely narrow. At one point the whole bus dissuaded the driver from trying to pass on a hairpin bend! At another a truck in front of us tried to pass a slower truck, stalled and started rolling back toward us, veered and ended up half across the road, back wheel against a low concrete guard post, angled toward the precipice. You could see its gravel load shifting and the front of the cab rising and tilting. We managed to scrape past it, but knew that unless the driver emptied some of his load that truck was heading down!!!

And at another point, a truck heading down a descent had somehow slipped off the road and was leaning on a 60 degree angle against a tree, the only thing keeping it from plummeting down a ravine. The driver sat calmly on the ground in front of the truck waiting.......for what who knows.

As before we endured two hours of this.

The only highlight was when one of the garbage bags the birdman had on board split open and a huge catfish nearly escaped......that took our minds off things for awhile.

On one descent I caught a glimpse of the river below and knew that the ordeal was over and thought about what would happen at home after such a stressful day. You know, you would get home, have a quick beer, followed by a hot shower, followed by a cold glass of crisp white wine, followed by the uncorking of a good red and a home cooked meal.....stress disappears. I figured that probably wasn't the way our day was going to end.

I was right...we finally got to Rongjiang, and for the first time in China were refused hotel accommodation. We knew that some hotels in parts of China could not take foreigners and had hit a town that was full of them.

Wandering the streets, obviously looking desperate, a young girl tried to help us but she too had difficulty. She finally paid for us to be put on a motorcycle that was pulling a tray arrangement and dispatched us down the main street to a tourist hotel. The sight of the two of us with all our luggage sitting on this "motorbike utility " created quite a bit of mirth amongst the other drivers!!

The first Hotel was full, much discussion re where next to go and finally a hotel that had a tourist vacancy. Straight out for that cold beer and much needed food.....not one restaurant that had a menu, so we found a supermarket (of sorts) bought a bottle of red, two buckets of instant noodles, and some sort of sweet cakes and went back to our room and devoured the lot whilst watching a Chinese Talent show on TV.

Surprisingly that seemed to do the trick!!!!