Anhui (~300 km)

The cities in Anhui do not merit their own individual posts. They are unattractive, underdeveloped and unpleasant. I had been warned about Bengbu from my dental hygienist, who had spent a summer there volunteering to fix people’s teeth. She did not enjoy it. I thought that it couldn’t have been that bad. On the map it looked like there were lots of parks. It was that bad. The parks were bad and the city half under construction. Dreadful.

The highlight of my time in Anhui was actually the route between Bengbu and Chuzhou. Unexpectedly, the road went through sparsely populated countryside that was heavily forested. Even many of the trees had clearly been recently planted, the countryside was beautiful. It was a pleasant change from the usual dusty countryside with people everywhere. Chuzhou was nicer than Bengbu, but really not very interesting. To be fair, I did not have time to visit Langya Shan (a mountain), the main tourist site in town. Perhaps had I visited I would have been more impressed.

In Chuzhou I stayed in five star white tile hotel for only $40 a night! Actually the rooms were quite nice, and very good value in my opinion, in spite of the ghastly exterior. The hotel was built in 1999, at the height of the white-tile craze that grabbed ahold of China for too long.