Yangshuo, China
24° 46' N 110° 30' E
Sep 29, 2005 10:33
Distance 414km

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Yangshuo, China

Text written in: English

We are happy to report that nothing spectacular happened on the flight from Xi'an to Guilin, which means that either actually nothing spectacular happened, or we're beginning to get used to all of this. We're definitely getting some of the little things down, for instance, before we left Xi'an, we had someone write in Chinese the address of the hotel we were staying at in Guilin and the price we were willing to pay to get there. So it was as simple as giving the piece of paper to a cab driver and climbing in when she nodded.
     Guilin is one of the biggest tourist destinations in China for the Chinese, but not so many westerners get there. It's extremely picturesque, and if you've ever seen one of those paper scroll-like water colors of the river winding through the steep ravine shrouded in mist, that's Guilin. The area is in southeast China and is therefore a fairly tropical climate. The difference from rainy and cold Xi'an was significant and we were peeling off clothes as soon as we got off the plane. Since Guilin is such a huge tourist attraction, we planned on heading about 30 miles south to a town called Yangshuo, which is smaller and only slightly less of a massive tourist destination. Since we got in late, we stayed one night in Guilin and got an early start the next day.
      Here's an interesting thing we never would have done two months ago: As we left the hotel to go to the bus station, a bus pulled up and a woman indicated that it was headed for Yangshuo, so we climbed on without any further questions besides price. Sure enough, we got there after driving around trying to fill the bus for another 45 minutes before actually leaving Guilin, but at least we got seats. Since we had been running around for the past few days, we booked a place just outside of Yangshuo on a quiet river to relax a little and forget our agenda, which was a good call. If you ever go to Yangshuo, China, we have definitely got a place for you to stay. It's called the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat and it was exactly what we needed to check out of civilization for a few days. Apart from actual modern amenities (A/C, working toilets, comfortable beds), we had killer views outside our balcony of a most scenic valley with mountains and rice paddies and a river running by right in front of the hotel. Nothing much to do here except relax and watch the rafts of tourists float slowly by in the hot sun. One morning we got up and walked around through the rice paddies as the sun came up before it got too hot. We had the chance to meet some of the local children as they navigated through the fields to get to school and they were eager to practice their English on us. We could tell they only knew the basic greetings etc., so we stuck to a pretty easy script of "How are you?", "I am fine, thank you.", and "My name is Andrea/Brian, what is your name?" which got them pretty excited that they were having a real conversation in English. Pretty cute stuff.
     For the first couple of days it was really quite hot and humid, so we kept a strict schedule of afternoon naps during the hottest time of the day. Tough, we know, but whoever said travel was easy? Eventually we got around to renting bikes and riding around, climbing a couple of peaks and doing a little exploring. Andrea signed up for a cooking class one day which took her through the local markets to buy ingredients which must have been really interesting since she came back a vegetarian, but the class was superb and she learned a few new dishes. We tried to stay out of downtown because it could get a little touristy, and it's actually a little crazy riding a bicycle around any of the main streets. We think it must be a law in China that you have to honk when overtaking someone, though we're not sure it applies to cars passing bicycles. Some people must think so however, which results in people often just driving around with their horns on. The cars in China must have a horn switch next to the light switch that lets you just keep the thing on, because that's what half the people do, and the others just honk randomly every oh, say, one or two seconds, all day. We swear we saw cars driving down empty streets honking away. It gets a little unnerving when you're riding your bike and a truck lays on the air horn three feet behind your left ear, it's not like we didn't hear it coming since half the trucks don't have mufflers. To add insult to injury, the direct blast of diesel exhaust in the face after they pass isn't exactly keeping our chances of lung cancer low. A couple of times we actually exhaled black smoke.

     We spent a last couple of days at a guesthouse right in the center of town where we could meet some other travelers. Interestingly, every other western traveler happened to be an English teacher somewhere in China. It turns out that while the rest of the country in vacationing, the westerners who work here take a little tiime off too. They all seemed to be getting a huge kick out of swapping stories and the fact that none of them had any sort of teaching credentials. Maybe that explains some of the translations we've been seeing.

     Along with the Chinese holiday, this part of China has a tradition of celebrating every second Monday for no apparent reason, which means excessive fireworks until noon on those particular days. Talk about creating a reason to party, but who's complaining? It's certainly better than drunken happy hours on Daytona beach.  Nevertheless, as exciting as downtown was, this was a town we planned to relax in and let the Chinese holiday pass, and that's what we did. Eventually we got around to booking a flight to Bangkok so we could find a flight on to Nepal. This country is far too big to get just more than a taste in a few short weeks, and anyway, we want to try our skills at butchering languages and complaining about the bathrooms in so many other countries.

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Photos / videos of "Yangshuo, China":

The River outside our hotel. Rice paddy at sunrise. Cormorant fishing (the birds do all of the work). These one-cylinder trucks were everywhere and were cool to look at until you got a faceful of exhaust. A hike to the top of Moon Hill, touristy, but pretty good views. The view from our hotel room. Insert fruity drink here. More sunrise shots of the river, but hey, we were asleep at 2pm.
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