Xijiang Ancient Town - lovely valley views!

🚗 To get into the Ancient Town you have to park and buy tickets at the main West Gate and walk with your stuff to the main bus area (towards the huge silver round building). There are traditional dancers upon entry and heaps of restaurants, souvenir shops as you enter (and exit) you pass. 🎟 The tickets including the bus were 110rmb each and you can exit and enter the park 4 times with the ticket. You then get on a bus for a 10km/10mins drive down a steep winding road. It still drops you off at the top of a hill you have to walk down (about 7mins) to get to the main viewing platform. We chose not to use the various small shuttle buses throughout the town because walking down and up the winding alleyways was fun and let us see the many different views! If you have any mobility issues the buses can take you from place to place but the line ups looked a little long depending on the time of day. 😬 This is the busiest and biggest Miao village in Guizhou and as such it gets pretty loud. There is still a lot of construction that starts early in the morning and traditional dance shows combined with nightly KTV can be quite loud. nay ⛰ Having said that – we found this glorious walk along a wooden walkway that led us to the next valley where we were in complete silence. It was around a 4-hour hike at a leisurely pace. Many tourists go here to dress up in the local ethnic minority costume and take pictures, so that seems to be the main thing most people do. For dinner, there is plenty of delicious restaurants along the way that sell delicious food but I would highly suggest having a night of street snacks. The local rice rolls are vegetarian and simply deliciously fresh. We also had some killer shaved noodles, some spicy roasted potatoes and some rice deserts. Washed down with a couple of beers and some glorious people watching – it’s a fun night out amongst crowds of people!