When Googling China (specifically places you can go on the bullet trains), I came across Furong. Spectacular in the pictures with a big lit-up waterfall in the middle. Then I left it a couple of months, got confused, and booked to go to Fenghuang instead by accident. Luckily for me, Fenghuang was also beautiful. Unluckily for me, I went from having not much I could eat, to zero I could eat for about 24 hours. One banana and a packet of almonds. I was so cranky.

Fenghuang is an ancient town with lots of history and culture. We know this, because when we arrived, the woman in our hotel immediately shunted us off to a 2 hour play that was entirely in Chinese, but was apparently about the history and culture. I've been held hostage at a lot of Fringe shows, so this was nothing new for me. Maybe it was good if you could speak Chinese. The music and dance was very… Traditional. This isn't specific shade to the Chinese. No one really wants to see two hours of Irish dancing either.

Anyway, we eventually escaped and walked up and down the river. Incredibly beautiful. Lanterns everywhere. Very old architecture built on the riverside. Enchanting alleyways. There seemed to be snippets of the play we'd seen happening everywhere too. On the negative side, there was also karaoke everywhere, and a lot of chickens in tiny cages.