China - Dandong

Dandong may not be China's most desired holiday destination, but it certainly draws in coachloads of Chinese tourists. Why? Because from its riverbank, you can see North Korea. Yes, hundreds of people flock there to have a look at North Korea. It is also a 5 hour bus journey away from Dalian, but I concluded that in China that's nothing. Whilst taking visitors to London, to Scotland for the weekend would seem ludicrous to us, the equivalent journey is just down the road to the Chinese. I promise never to moan about the 'long' journey from home to university again, after finding my language partner's trip to university is 22 hours on the train!
As soon as we got to Dandong, we were treated to a Yalu river boat trip to get a closer look at North Korea. Whilst a novelty, half an hour seemed like a long time to spend staring at the riverbank of another country, although its contrast to the skyscrapers of Dandong was remarkable.
We then headed to a river for 'drifting'... This turned out to basically be rafting in dinghies of two, equipped with water guns. It was definitely one of the highlights. Even people not on our trip were shooting us with their water guns and people were placed along the riverbank to soak us! We had to wear our (lovely) yellow t-shirts, which turned my white shorts into yellow shorts!

The next day my shorts and t-shirt still weren't dry but expecting a 'cycle' up phoenix mountain, the only other clothes I had were skirts. Climbing the mountain (no bike involved... it was a circular walk) was massively exhausting, especially in the heat. It took a good few hours but was actually really good, with unusual sights such as a man with a monkey, hundreds of locks on railings (for loved ones) and a man playing a one-stringed instrument. After passing a mountain shrine on the way up, we went to look in the 'pheonix cave' on the way down, not realising this cave was a one-way passage halfway back UP the mountain and completely dark!

When we got back to the hotel, we were at a bit of a loose end, but the Swedish students invited us out to try some rice wine with them. After searching hard for one of the few bars of Dalian, we ended up at 'Noah's, for your ark bar'. Inside it was decorated to look like the inside of an ark, the rice wine was scarily pink but there was a nice range of cocktails and live music was playing. There was also lots of messages on bits of paper on the walls, in all languages, so we asked if we could add to it! There will now always be a little bit of Durham in Dalian.