One of the rides of our life.

RYAN...

Our friends Laura and James came to hickville for the weekend to see us. They came bearing information about a mystical, magical Hot Springs that lies in Daoxian County.  We were surprised because we had never heard of such a place.

Claire said that he looked like a rooster preening himself, which he did.

We got some information from one of our Chinese teacher friends that the Hot Springs lie about one and a half hours away from Daoxian. We hired a minibus and a driver for the day and headed out into the mountains.

We almost did not get there alive. In fact i am genuinely surprised that we survived this trip. The driver, who Claire nicknamed "Charlie" drove at new land speed records around corners completely blind and over hills on the wrong side of the road (well, as the road was so windy and thin there really was only one side of the road). James said to me later (he was sitting in the front seat with white knuckles the whole time) that the single reason that we didn't die was because there were no cars driving the other way.  However, we did almost send a motorbike and its two passengers hurtling into the river below at one point.

The trip up into the mountains was really beautiful but was somewhat destroyed by the fear we were all having for our lives.  The rice fields were really green and the mountains just jutted up out of them from nowhere.  For some reason around this area there was a whole lot of water.  It was everywhere, pouring off the mountains in waterfalls, gushing all over the road and pouring into the raging river (which looked like it was boiling) just next to the road.

The town where the hot springs are was a hydroelectric farm and so there was a massive waterfall visible from the town nestled in between the large mountains.  Charlie took us to see a lake and got stuck in the middle of it when he boarded a bamboo raft and realised that the pushing pole was too short to reach the bottom.  That was funny, watching him try to paddle his way to shore with a plank of wood.

The "Hot Springs" were a bit of a joke really.  By "Hot Springs" they really mean "warm swimming pool that costs 30 Yuan to get in".  Almost to mock us I thought, there was a lucious painting of the real hot springs with naked chinese ladies and beautiful clean water among rocks staring down at us. This made us wonder if there was an actual hot springs or if this was it. Also we wondered if there once was a real hot springs and they decided to plonk a big complex on top of it.  Lovely.  By the way everyone left when we got in. Way to make us feel wanted.

Charlie came to swim with us in his Jocks - I thought that was nice of him. He soon got bored of us and got out and started to dry himself by squatting on a bench and wiping his arms.  Claire said that he looked like a rooster preening himself, which he did.

Back in the bus to ride all the perilous way back to Daoxian. Put Laura and James on a bus for Yongzhou and felt a little sad because it was the last time that we were to see them in China.  I wonder if we will ever see them again?  Who knows.