We stayed overnight at the Phoenix Government Hotel and it was a very nice hotel but is truly geared to the Chinese tourist so that means, nothing at all was in English. In Beijing and Shanghai, all of the switches for the lights, sound, radio and television were bi-lingual so you had a good idea of what was what but in the Phoenix Hotel, all bets were off. I hit switch thinking I was going to turn off a light and an attendant knocks on my door and asks me what I need. I assume that is what she was asking as it was in Chinese and though I could talk to Anna when she was two, I had nothing to say to her. Needless to say, even though Pat had my hotel room number, still didn’t do any good when she tried to call me.
The next morning, we visited the Fenghuang old city, part of Phoenix town and it was like you stepped back two hundred years into China. A wonderful experience of walking through the market town and seeing a bustling shopping district of unusual things everywhere. A quiet and easy lifestyle, people were very friendly and nothing was very rushed. We saw many different ethnic costumes and you can tell, the shops and people in this town were really not a regular foreign tourist stop. Well worth the effort to get here.
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