The following day, I checked out to the Fenghuang International Youth Hostel and made my way to the long distance bus station not too far from the town center. I intend to finally leave the province of Hunan after several days of exploring. Unfortunately, there was no direct bus out of the province, or rather, no direct bus to the place I need to go to.
I needed go to the nearest big city and get a ride there. The nearest big city is the transport hub of Huaihua. This city is a convenient place for transportation and seems to exist only for this sole purpose. There doesn’t seem to be a lot in the way of attractions in the city itself, though there are some of them some kilometers away from the city. But I didn’t really intended to visit them.
Huaihua was a nice few hours bus ride from Fenghuang. They dropped me at the Huaihua train station and I quickly made my way to the ticket booth. Since it was a transport hub, it was expected that there are a lot of people there. The train station itself was not that big, though the length of the queues were still managable. I got behind a short line and after a few minutes it was already my turn. I asked for tickets to my destination but it turns out that the queue was for refunds!
With the train departure coming fast, I quickly left and went to the correct queue. I was dismayed to find out that it was the longest queue. With the train departure coming up fast I needed to do something. I gathered my courage to ask the guy in front of the queue to buy the tickets for me. But instead he offered to let me go ahead of him. I was first hesitant but knowing that I don’t really have the luxury of time, I asked the lady at the counter for tickets to my destination. Tickets are sold out. Disappointed, I thanked the people in the queue for letting me do that and left the train station with my backpack.
The only other option was to take the bus out of the province. I hailed a cab and it brought me to the Huaihua Long Distance Bus Station. It was just a short distance away from the train station and I should have been able to walk to it but I didn’t want to because I didn’t know where it was. There I conveniently bought my bus tickets. I would be an eight hour ride so they had sleeper buses for that route. I guess it was fortunate that Huahua is a transport hub and transportation would be easy to find here.
The lady from the bus company I bought the tickets from saw that I was alone and told me to bring my bags to the bus since it was already there. She loaded my bag on the baggage compartment and asked me to just come back around 3:30 in the afternoon. The bus leaves at four in the afternoon.
Now with nothing to do, I decided to explore the immediate area of where I was. Huaihua isn’t an impressive city. In fact comparing it to the other Chinese cities, this one seems to be a little drab. They did have a shopping center nearby which I went to finding nothing interesting, I walked on the streets to explore more. There wasn’t really anything of interest.
Soon it was time for lunch and I spotted this little fastfood looking restaurant which serves rice meals. I forgot what they called the food. But it was rather unique, it had some preserved vegetables which imparted a soury taste to the food. I didn’t really like it that much but at least, I could hang out around this restaurant as long as I liked.
But then you can’t really hang around in a restaurant without getting bored out of your mind. Along the street I saw and internet cafe and decided that I’d spend the rest of the day surfing the net and catching up with my friends. The internet cafe was rather dark but functional. The men were all smoking away and I was hoping I won’t get seated next to a chimney. The local kids were all playing online games there and it seemed that it really is a big thing in China.
After a few hours wasting away in front of the computer, it was soon time to go. I headed back to the bus station and had some very early dinner. It was noodles just in front of the bus I was going to take. The man manning the store didn’t speak Mandarain but somehow I got ourselves understood. The lady from the bus company saw me and asked me to board the bus.
The bus was a two level sleeper. I apparently got the top bunk. But the lady asked me to stay at the bottom bunk instead. I guess she was looking out for me because the top bunk won’t be very comfortable. The bus wasn’t full so I could just move down anyway. A few a minutes later the bus departed the bus station for our 8 hour journey out of the province of Hunan.
Looking back, the province of Hunan was a surpringly interesting place. And I didn’t even get to cover half of the province. Its huge limestone concentrations are probably the highest in the world, providing the province with an endless supply of beautiful and surreal mountainous landscape. Historical places also abound here and I only got to visit the ancient town of Fenghuang. Although, Hunan hardly ever gets any press abroad, it is certainly one of the more interesting places to visit in China.
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