Finally, here’s a meaty, ‘real’ post for you to get your eyes into. So, way back on July 5th, myself, Vicky, and B all took a trip to An’kang. This was my second trip to B’s hometown, and although not as long as the last, it was just as fun…


As soon as you head south out of Xi’an, the landscape goes from dirty, sprawling urbanism to bliss countryside.

This is a bad picture, but it allows me to write up something. This is us going through the ZhongNanShan tunnel. The longest two-tube road tunnel in the world. (and the overall 2nd longest road tunnel in the world.) The tunnel is a whopping 18,040 meters long, that’s over 11miles in English-English. It goes right under (and through) the Zhong Nan mountain. At the peak, there’s over 1,600 meters of mountain above the tunnel. The tunnel is arrow-straight, and I can tell you, at 11 miles long, there is NO light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn’t much traffic going through at all, which just made it even more eerie.
 
At 11miles long, it can get pretty boring, so they have to put in fancy sections to wake drivers up. I still saw two cars driving through with NO LIGHTS ON!!!! Anyway, more info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongnanshan_Tunnel

Of the four hour bus journey, about two hours is spent going in and out of tunnels. Here you can see one of the train tunnels that runs alongside the road tunnel.

Our trusty steed, stopped at a rest stop.

 
Left: Upon reaching HanYin (an out-laying town of An’kang where B’s family were staying) I was reunited with B’s cousin. I hadn’t seen him since Spring Festival. The photo on the right you may remember from my spring festival blog post. He’s definitely grown!

B and V with HanYin in the background.

We climbed a small hill, and there was this beautiful pagoda on top.

And looking down from the hill onto the city; not so beautiful.

 
Me taking a photo of B taking a photo of me… 😛

Some interesting bugs around. B’s little cousin made sure to play with them all.

As well as pose for the camera, he was quite a dude.

Here he is playing with another bug.

A cute baby on top of the hill.

And an old dude chilling with his pipe.

My camera was bigger than his head.

That night we went home and were all sitting around talking. B’s mom said she was going to go to sleep, because in the mornings B’s auntie makes her run up and down the stairs. They were on the third floor, so I thought, it can’t be too bad, so I told her I’d even do it with her…

The next morning at 5:30am I was very disorientated. Why were people making so much noise and getting me to wake up. Oh. Apparently by “morning” she meant “6am” and by “stairs” she meant “the stairs that go up the side of the mountain outside.”… oops.

Here’s a photo of Vicky and B’s mom jogging along. Where am I? Top of the mountain. Why? Ego.
I was lugging around my camera bag (take it everywhere) with it’s usual 4-5kg weight, not too bad, but when you’re jogging up a hill, it gets heavy FAST. Anyway, B’s auntie had suggested that myself and B’s 16-year-old-full-of-youth-and-energy-lives-in-the-country-side-climbs-mountains-for-fun cousin have a race up the hill. In front of the girlfriend’s family, I had no choice but to accept and I dug deep and started jogging. In my ignorance and naivety to the height of the mountain, I’d set off quite quickly. Her cousin soon got discouraged and slowed his pace to a brisk walk, allowing me to get around a corner, out of sight, keel over, and die. As long as I could stay one corner ahead, and thus out of sight, I was fine. I continued this run-like-hell….keel-over-and-die strategy to the top of the mountain, where I found a place to sit, and tried to recover before they arrived.

Me, trying not to look tired. To my right, B’s cousin, to his right, B’s auntie (not his mother, a different auntie.) The kid at the front is her son, and on the right, that’s Vicky.

Vicky and B’s mom getting their breath back.

Again, left to right: B’s Auntie, B’s Sister, B’s Cousin, B’s Mom, Me, B. Oh, and her cousin squatting at the front.

  
Random snaps from around the top of the mountain.

HanYin is smaller than Weinan, and definitely doesn’t have foreigners. So, this guy saw me and took my photo — so I took his! 🙂

The family outside the pagoda.

 
Again, B taking a photo of me taking a photo.

Back in town, Vicky took this photo of people washing their clothes by the well.

Where we bought breakfast.

Then we went to the restaurant where B’s mom, sister, auntie and cousin all work. Her auntie manages there, so we posed with photos of the all the staff, etc.

getting on the bus to head from Hanyin to An’kang I saw this sign.

A bad photo, but this is me on the bus, holding a sleeping B and a sleeping B’s cousin. B’s sister was also sleeping on Vicky. Hehe.

Once in An’kang, we headed to the river (as pictured in the title photo of this post.) A spot that’s safe for swimming…or…so people said. I’ve never swam in a river before, but MY GOD it was tough! Towards the middle of the river, the current was so strong! The water was only about hip deep, but it was impossible to stay standing. At one point myself and Vicky started trying to walk across it. About half way through I had a few instances of loosing my footing (the river bed was made of stones, some sharp.) Every time I lost my footing, I moved about 2 meters down river. Vicky claims she saw pure terror in my eyes, and at points I honestly thought I was close to going bye-bye. About 50 meters down river there was a little rapid-y looking section, and I don’t think you’d come out of the other side of that with your skull in tact. It was the most scared I’ve been in the past few years.

After we’d got that out of our system, the place was much more suited to chilling. A couple of chairs and a couple of beers.

Cold beer, watching the sunset, hot air, cool water running past. Life was good.

The small restaurant area where we stole our seats from.

People at the restaurant washing their clothes.

In the mini-bus on the way back.

Looking out of the window.

I liked this guys “ladder” to attach stuff to the telephone wires.

Another great sign.

Another Vicky photo of the river and An’kang at night.

MELONS!

Finally, before heading back, we went and checked out Aston in An’kang. The boss (Jack) treated us to lunch, and then even took us to the bus station! 🙂 How kind! 🙂

This concluded our short trip to An’kang. Hope to go back soon. Also, this helps me in my goal of catching up with my blog posts. More soon!

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