In the morning we met up with our tour group at 7am in the communal area and meeting our first tour guide, Ali. It was a reasonable size tour group of about 20 of us. Dave and one other guy, the rest being women. There was a good mix of ages, ranging from 18- 50, with the majority being in their 20s. We were asked to complete last minute paperwork, received our Dragon trip itineraries. There was palpable nervousness and excitement to get going, however that was dulled a bit when the bus to pick us up was quite late. When it finally arrived, the bus took us up to Victoria Peak where there was stunning views of Hong Kong and the bay. We all explored, getting different pictures before having breakfast at Pacific Coffee up on Victoria Peak. As a group we then took the old very famous tram car down the peak before the bus then took us to the MRT. As a mass group, all with large backpacks we then took the MRT one stop, bought some snacks and were suddenly all at the Chinese boarder which we were all scared about due to worries about visas but it ended up being straightforward. After 9 more stops on the MRT we were at the train station. Ali handed us our train tickets and explained where to go in the station before leaving us to make our own way in the station. The joy of the Dragon Trip is that it is an organised tour but there were different tour guides in each area and to travel between places we had to organise ourselves through these transitions. This meant that we could experience more local ways of travelling rather than being shipped around on a tour bus everywhere.
We stayed together as a group entering the large train station. For some this was the first travel trip they had ever been on or was the first place they were visiting on their trip so it was very daunting. Even at the end of our trip this was quite daunting for us due to the different dynamic of being part of a group and not having planned any of it ourselves. To enter the station we first had to go through security checks, putting our bags through scanners. This was easier for some than others and there were no clear queues, just pushing towards different stations. We stayed together as a group to make sure we all got through without issue and made our way to find the platform we needed. Thankfully this was relatively simple. We had some time so put our bags down all together as a group in a central location so that people could use the toilets and get snacks. This was a culture shock for many of the girls as they didn’t realise there would be squat toilets, they would need their own toilet paper if they wanted it and that they would need their hand sanitiser so soon. But it gave us something to laugh about and bond over. We boarded a nice train, found our seats and had a 3 hour journey watching the scenery get prettier as we got out into the countryside. We arrived at 5.30pm where we found our next tour guide, Sally and got on a bus for another couple of hours. We eventually arrived at our accommodation in Yangsho at 7.30pm. For our first evening as a group Sally took us out to dinner at a restaurant called Cloud 9 and ordered a range of dishes for us. After a delicious meal, beer and green tea we wandered around West Street- a very loud, main area of Yangshao full of mental Chinese clubs and bars and street stalls. Instead, we had a beer back at the hostel with some of the group.
The Dragon Trip tour we were doing was- and meant that we would see highlights of China. This was a nice change of pace for me as it meant that I didn’t have to do any research into areas really. The price we paid included all our accommodation (we went for the standard shared accommodation with fellow tour members in dorms rather than pay the extra for our own room), all travel between locations in China- this offered a variety of buses, metros, bullet trains and sleeper trains, a few meals in some locations and then a wide variety of activities. Some activities we all did as a group and then on other days we had a choice of activities we could decide if we wanted to do or a choice between of which activity we wanted to do. There were a few other activities that were paid extras if you wanted to do them, but most were covered. We also got free time to do with as we pleased, which gave the tour a nice reasonably relaxed pace as we weren’t constantly being whisked off to things without anytime to explore.
The next morning in Yangshao we had a choice of activities. I chose to partake in a cooking course, with a lot of the tour group whilst Dave chose to go with the active group to do rock climbing.
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