Relaxing in Jinshiqiao

Today (June 16) was a pretty good day - the weather these last few days has been excellent - not too hot, but not rainy, sometimes sunny and I've been able to go pretty far. Today was a 120km day. I got going fairly early in the morning, and was going really fast - I made it to Xinhua from Lianyuan (55km) in about 3 hours, so I was pretty surprised at that - so I went at a much more relaxed pace through the afternoon. The rode past Xinhua wasn't as nice, and began to climb into the mountains. It was fairly pretty, and I am happy to get back into the mountains - the scenery is better, there are more opportunities to talk to people, and there is much less traffic on the roads.

However, I've noticed that the locals have worse and worse Mandarin. I often have no clue what people are saying. Every now and then there will be someone nearby who speaks good Mandarin and will translate the dialect for me, but I am really having a tough time understanding some of these people. Generally, however, the younger people can speak Mandarin - so it would seem that the days of dialect are numbered - in a couple hundred years probably not many people will be able to speak the dialects.

Anyways, my goal today was to make it to Jinshiqiao, where my map showed the presence of hot springs. I also had thought of looking at a waterfall that is listed on my map as being 4km off the main road - however, when I got to the interesection for that road, I talked to the locals and they were like "There's a waterfall there? I've never heard of it." I even showed them on the map the waterfall, and they weren't that convinced of its existence. So I decided that if even the locals don't know about this waterfall, it probably isn't that cool. So I kept on going, and made it into town around 4pm. I went to the hotsprings, which are located about 3km outside of town. The hotel there was going to be 160 yuan a night, which was really pricey (by Chinese standards). The people at the hotel protested that it was a "3 star hotel" and that I should really stay there, but I decided to stay at a small hotel just outside of the resort that was 50 yuan, and quite clean and nice. The ticket to the hotsprings itself was 48 yuan, and was generally a swimming pool. However, there was also a pool that had hundreds of tiny little fish that feed on dead skin - they flock to your body and nibble away at your body - it was quite ticklish, and I couldn't help but laugh. Cool feeling. The hot springs swimming pool was quite nice - the water is naturally 49.5 degrees Celsius and quite comfortable, with a faint smell of sulphur in the air. After riding my bike for so long, it felt fantastic to just relax in the pool. When I got there, I was the only person in the place, which felt a little weird, but later a group of friends came so it wasn't like all the employees were there just to serve me. Pretty nice day.