Yangshuo, China 10-15-09

Lots of sleep, listening to music, reading pages of my book (finished “Life of Pi”), and bowls of instant noodle soups later, we arrived in Guilin (a hub city to travel into). From Guilin we caught an hour and a half bus to Yangshuo and hoped our hostel owner would be there waiting for us (we had sent an email before we left and I also sent one on the bus ride there from my phone).

When we arrived at the little town of Yangshuo, at a gas station, we didn’t know where to go and our hostel owner was nowhere in site. A man came up to me trying to get me to ride on his rickshaw, and instead I acted out that I needed to use his cell phone. He called our hostel owner (luckily my phone has internet and I was able to pull up our reservation confirmation with the owner’s mobile number on it). The rickshaw guy spoke on the phone for a VERY long time and I wondered if he was even talking to the right guy, but eventually he handed me the phone and we found our hostel owner.

Richard and I introduced ourselves and followed him to our shuttle that would be taking us to the hostel…or so we though, until we saw him hop onto a scooter and point to his other friend on a scooter and smiled for us to join. Yup, they strapped our backpacks onto their scooters and we jumped on the back of them to ride to our new home. Our hostel, Yangshuo Culture House, was really cute. It's a family run place and they served breakfast every morning and cooked a huge variety of meals for the backpackers at dinner. When we arrived at 9pm, starving, the brother of the owner (the chef), cooked us up a few dishes and the food was delicious!

In the morning, Richard and I decided it would be nice to go for a bike ride around town. We rented a couple bikes from our hostel for about $3 US for the day and set off on our pink bikes. Before we could even make it down our block, an old Chinese lady who looked to be about 105 years old, was walking towards me and stopped to look at me. She pointed to my eyes and touched my hair and nodded approvingly. She had a smile on her face and was saying a lot of things in Chinese that I didn’t understand. Then she grabbed my thigh with her hands and made a gesture to stay I had muscles. The best though was that she then lifted up her pant leg all the way to her thigh to show me her bony little leg. I guess she was showing me the difference between us, but I just kept saying she was so strong and did my best impression of a muscle man.

The bike ride was great, we rode through the little town of Yangshuo, past all the little soup shops, repair shops, and dollar store-type shops. We rode about 30 minutes away towards the Li River with just a little town map to use as our guide. Every time we stopped to ask for directions, the locals would point in the same direction and say “bamboo raft?” “bamboo raft?”. We just wanted to get to the river and even less people in Yangshuo speak English.. so we just carried on along in the direction of the bamboo rafts figuring that the river would have to be there too.

By the time I heard the 10^th person yell out “bamboo rafts?”, I thought maybe it would be a fun thing to try anyway. So, Rich and I gave in and headed towards the rafts. When we got there, they bamboo raft people took our bikes and Rich and I acted like apes for about 20 minutes, acting out that we want our bikes to be at the bottom of the river when we get off. All these people could say was- “bamboo rafts?”

We stood around for a bit, unsure what to do next, until a man carrying a huge bamboo pole came walking towards us and hinted with a head nudge for us to follow. We walked down some steps and saw about 100 bamboo rafts. They were all long and narrow and made to seat two. We followed our bamboo guide to our raft and took a seat as he paddled and maneuvered his way out of the bamboo cluster.

The next 2 hours were incredibly relaxing and peaceful. We drifted down the dark blue Li River, completely surrounded by Limestone mountain peaks that this area is famous for. So famous, that the picture of these peaks and this river is on the back of China’s 20 Yuan bill.

The ride was smooth and breezy, with the exception of the few minor rapids we passed over along the river. A couple times our raft pulled along side another larger bamboo raft sitting on the river, where they sold drinks, beers, kabobs, fish, and fruit. We got a pomelo (this region is known for this fruit) which is a fruit that is similar to a grapefruit. It’s about 4 times larger, a bit sweeter, and a little less juicy. The fruit is a bit of a challenge to eat, it has a tough outer layer and then you have to sort-of pick the inside pulp out.. but it tastes really nice.

After the relaxing bamboo ride we hopped on our bikes and headed towards Moon Mountain, a mountain that has a hole in the middle of it. We had seen it in pictures before, but didn’t think it could be as substantial in person. Well, it was. The locals said we could climb to the top in only 30 minutes. Although doubtful, we decided to hike anyway. The trek was step after steep step, straight up the mountain. Huge stones were placed all up the slope of the mountain and hundreds of stairs later (about 30 minutes actually), we were there! The view from the top was incredible. We could see the whole town and it was nice to feel some cool wind after such a hike. We rode back to our hostel, just in time for our feast of dinner. 12 plates of food awaited us and we ate and ate and ate as more food appeared.

The following day we rented two scooters (for $5 each for the day) and decided to see what was outside of our small town of Yangshuo. We rode two hours away, past fields, farm lands, farmers, little shacks, and 3 very tiny villages. What we saw was almost indescribable in words. The countryside looked as if it were straight out of a movie. We saw men pushing wooden carts, kids running around barefoot, women carrying sticks on their shoulders with bags tied to either end of them, stray dogs running around, workers farming the land wearing triangle hats, and fields of crop land for miles; all while completely surrounded by gorgeous mountains. It was incredible. We stopped at a little house where a lady was selling pomelos and wound up meeting the whole family of 10. We stayed and talked to them for about 40 minutes (the two younger girls could speak a bit of English they learned in school) and we took pictures and laughed.

Rich and I carried on and scooted till we hit the Li River. The batteries on our electric scooters were about half-way down by this time (4:00pm) so we decided we should probably get back quickly. We barely made it, having to jump off our scooters and push them up hills while holding down the throttle, and driving at about 5 miles an hour is not fun when busses and huge industrial trucks are honking and driving around you.. but we made it back safe and sound. For the first time, I felt like I got to see the REAL China. And this day went down as one of my best days traveling… maybe ever.

Today we packed up our bags and headed to the train station to catch our 25 hour train to Hong Kong. You know.. I’m starting to get used to these long trains. We came fully prepared this time, 3 bowls of instant noodle soup each, some apples, bananas, and Oreo’s. All set.

It will be sad to leave China now, I’ve really enjoyed every city I have been too on this trip, especially Yangshuo. But.. I must carry on and explore some more.

Next stop, Hong Kong! :)