I was persuaded by some friends to take a few days off over the Golden Week holiday and accompany them on a very long bus trip down 
south. I wasn’t sure at first, that I wanted to spend 6 hours on a bus, but I decided that it might be fun once we got there and that 6 hours on a bus wouldn’t kill me. It became clear after 3 or 4 hours that it was going to take a lot longer than 6 hours to reach Nanxi River. As the bus slowly trundled south towards Wenzhou the blue dot on my phone map was moving painfully slowly.
We stopped a couple of times for a break, just long enough to visit the predictably disgusting toilets found at every motorway service station in China and to buy snacks. I settled on an ice-cream and a duck leg which had been cooked very slowly and to be fair, although quite dry, tasted excellent.
7 and a half hours after leaving Shanghai we eventually reached our destination – a little UNSECO world heritage village with quaint old buildings and pagodas. It was fairly nice but nothing different to dozens of others of a similar style around China. I sat with a little old lady outside her front door. She was sitting on a small wooden stool. Chicken pecked at the ground and kittens hid under a barrow, sheaves of hay were stacked neatly against the walls of the houses and all around the central courtyard were tools, racks, hoes and others I couldn’t identify.
The old lady only spoke local dialect but I managed to talk to her through a neighbour who spoke Chinese. I would love to say we had an interesting chat but it was short and on the usual topic – where are you from, how old are you etc.
We hopped on the bus again and shortly afterwards arrived at the river side where we found a DIY ferry across to the other side. We had to get ourselves and out luggage in and pull the rope to get us to the other side. It was all good fun and on landing on the opposite bank, we found a short path which led us to our hotel which was located in a densely wooded area. It was nicely done – not really western standard but it was ok.
The next day we headed out up through the rice fields on our ‘big trek’ aided by a local guide who, it became clear after a few hours, didn’t know the way. Eventually after we had insisted we stop for lunch, and after several wrong turns down steep slippery paths in the thick bush, I persuaded him to ask at a farm we had passed further down the hill.
Eating his pride, he did just that and the farmer explained that we would have to walk right over the mountain and get to a road where we would have to phone for someone to pick us up. It was too far to walk back the hotel – we were on the wrong mountain completely. Luckily I had taken three bottles of water because it was extremely sweaty and I had to give one bottle to a French girl who had not brought any at all. 
Nanxi River area is quite pretty and I enjoyed the walk through the rice fields over the mountain but if I were to go again I’d probably take the train. 7.5 hours on a bus is just too far for a few days even though the rice fields were great.