Street Food Huanren! Huanren, or to give its full tilt the Huanren Manchu Autonomous County is a weird little town, rather than country about an hour, or so drive to Dandong. If you’ve read much of my stuff you will know we have a bit of a thing for Dandong.
To read the Ultimate Guide to Dandong click here
Why would you visit Huanren?
The area was historically part of Korea, so it is popular with Korean tourists. There is a big mountain called “mother mountain” which apparently looks like a pregnant lady, boobs and all, but aside from this there really is little reason to go there.
Despite this there is a HUGE and extremely weird Bondlairesuqe hotel, which I will get into more details about later.
Essentially the main reason that we came here at least was as part of the Borderlands tour, where we essentially go along the border between North Korea and China exploring some really out of the way places.
You can see our borderlands tour here .
The area is actually extremely interesting with each city having its own tale to tell and I will probably do a mini-series on them, but as always I digress.
The Cai Longjin Winery
Having our own bus gave us the ability to explore and as well as finding a North Korean restaurant we also discovered an alarmingly deluxe hotel for about $40 a night. Expensive for the region, but again when you see the photos you see that was this anywhere else in the world it would be 10x the price.
Aside from being really deluxe and retro the hotel also has a winery literally built into the mountain. And this is where it just gets surreal and as stated the feeling that you are in the lair of Bond villain.
It also begs the question of why the hell is this hotel here? I have never seen it wth any guests that were not mine and while I am sure they get a few Korean guests I also get the impression this is not necessarily a place run for profit. Know what I mean?
Anyway, if I ever get my weird hotel website up – which you can find here
Street Food Huanren!
OK, so I called this blog street food Huanren, but I really should have said weird rant Huanren guide. I don’t have any pictures of the street food, but it was very classic of the fare you would find in the Dongbei region of China.
To read about Street Food in Dandong click here
The major highlight though at least on our last trip was a place that did all you can eat hot-pot and all you can drink bad Snow beer (link to YPT) for about $7. The night ended with many a shirtless man, although in an amazing turn of events this was a night I remained sober as a judge.
The world can be a funny place