kez & hay travels 06

Our next destination should have been Guilin, but with no available train seats we took a detour to Guiyang.  With only half the distance of most of our previous trips we went at half the speed so once again we had a 18 hour train ride.  However we went through some amazing scenery at the foot of hundreds and hundreds of lime stone hills. We also made friends with our neighbours on the train who were a large group of teachers from a school in Guiyang.  Consequently we were invited to visit their school.  So when we arrived at Guiyang the next day we found their school and were greeted as if we were royalty.  We went around the school which had 1000 pupils for 50 teachers!!!  The children were very excited to see a couple of "foreigners" at their school and we soon had our own entourage!  We were then invited to lunch with 2 English teachers and the headteacher who spoke no english but was very talkative to us all the same.  In the afternoon one of the English teachers, Zhouting, gave up her free afternoon to be our personal tour guide around Qiangling Shan Park.  This park was beautiful with a large working Monastery at the top of the hills.  The park was also inundated with monkeys. We then went back to the school to say our goodbyes and we were invited yet again for an afternoon snack of cold noodles and chili - suprisingly very good.  The friendliness of the school made our trip to Guiyang very memorable.  Thanks again Dong Shan Primary School.