What an Adventure!
I can very vividly remember about 10 years ago seeing a place on a PBS travel show where people live in a surreal landscape of tropical rain forest, float down the many rivers in bamboo rafts, and drink a very uniqe oil tea. I'm glad to say that I've arrived.
I'm posting from the internet room of the Yangshuo Culture House, a very small hostel in Yangshuo China run by a guy named Wei (with 4.5 fingers on his right hand) and his family. Things here are really great and this is definitly one of the best places I've been on my trip so far. The scenery is absolutely incredible (go to images.google.com and search "yangshuo" or "guilin" which is another city nearby) and I feel more like I'm in Vietnam or Cambodia than China. Even the people look different than they did in northern china.
Two days ago I travelled from Xi'an to Yangshuo by catching a flight from Xi'an to Guilin, then a taxi into town, and a minibus to Yangshuo (about an hours ride). Once I arrived in Yangshuo I gave Wei a call and he came to pick me up. After handing me a helmet and taking my small bag to carry himself, we were off on his motorbike! (I was still carrying my big backpack!) We were quite a sight to the locals.
Once we arrived, dinner was served to everyone staying there (about 10 in total). Everything seemed to be of local origin and featured a lot of chili peppers, bamboo, eggplant, and a little meat - needless to say it was delicious.
The next day was probably the biggest adventure I've had since I left. Five of us from the hostel - A welsh couple, two australians, and I decided to take a bike ride around the countryside with the goal of going to a large cave outside of town. Things started off smoothly enough with us renting some mountain bikes for around $1.25/day and making our way to the trail head.
The ride through the countryside was absolutely amazing. All around Yangshuo are large limestone peaks that fade off into the distant mist. Between all of these are farmers who use water buffalos to pull the plows through their rice paddies. I would generally have to say that this is the most incredible scenery I've ever seen in my life. I simply wouldn' have believed it unless I hadn't seen it for myself. Simply mindblowing.
After about an hour on our ride we came to the point where we thought there should have been a bridge. Since our map was really no more than someones idea of what the bike paths might/should look like we weren't suprised when no bridge stood there. The only option? Hire a few rafts and have the locals ferry us across the river. We continued biking and came to the main road a little while later (did I mention I'm in the tropics in August, riding a bike through the countryside? It's a little warm by this point).
At this point things got bad - we first took a left and rode for about 2 miles. Then we realized that we should have gone right, so we turned around and went back those 2 miles PLUS another 3 miles. At this point we decided to confer with some locals who made it clear (even though they spoke no English) that we were somewhere completely different than we believed! We figure in retrospect that we had screwed up pretty early on and that we were just going back and forth for nothing (grrr!)
Once we realized where we were, our options were to bike all the way back to Yangshuo (about 10 miles at this point) or hire some locals to float us down the river on their rafts for an hour and a half (and a lot of money). Both of these woudl have meant missing the spelunking expidition we had already paid for. Then, I had a brilliant idea. We went across the street to where some covered trucks were parked and convinced one of the locals to load the of us, along with our bikes into the back of the truck and drive us to the cave. This wasn't any sort of normal human transport - in fact this truck was used to transport livestock (literally). After half our hour of bone jarring riding we arrived and went through the cave. I can't say the cave was my favorite, but it was a good time and the others seemed to really enjoy it.
The ride home was pretty uneventful and we soon found ourselves back in Wei's house where we devoured dinner (we had missed lunch). Soon afterwards we all passed out.
Today I'm going to buy another pair of shorts in town, and get a haircut.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew
I'm posting from the internet room of the Yangshuo Culture House, a very small hostel in Yangshuo China run by a guy named Wei (with 4.5 fingers on his right hand) and his family. Things here are really great and this is definitly one of the best places I've been on my trip so far. The scenery is absolutely incredible (go to images.google.com and search "yangshuo" or "guilin" which is another city nearby) and I feel more like I'm in Vietnam or Cambodia than China. Even the people look different than they did in northern china.
Two days ago I travelled from Xi'an to Yangshuo by catching a flight from Xi'an to Guilin, then a taxi into town, and a minibus to Yangshuo (about an hours ride). Once I arrived in Yangshuo I gave Wei a call and he came to pick me up. After handing me a helmet and taking my small bag to carry himself, we were off on his motorbike! (I was still carrying my big backpack!) We were quite a sight to the locals.
Once we arrived, dinner was served to everyone staying there (about 10 in total). Everything seemed to be of local origin and featured a lot of chili peppers, bamboo, eggplant, and a little meat - needless to say it was delicious.
The next day was probably the biggest adventure I've had since I left. Five of us from the hostel - A welsh couple, two australians, and I decided to take a bike ride around the countryside with the goal of going to a large cave outside of town. Things started off smoothly enough with us renting some mountain bikes for around $1.25/day and making our way to the trail head.
The ride through the countryside was absolutely amazing. All around Yangshuo are large limestone peaks that fade off into the distant mist. Between all of these are farmers who use water buffalos to pull the plows through their rice paddies. I would generally have to say that this is the most incredible scenery I've ever seen in my life. I simply wouldn' have believed it unless I hadn't seen it for myself. Simply mindblowing.
After about an hour on our ride we came to the point where we thought there should have been a bridge. Since our map was really no more than someones idea of what the bike paths might/should look like we weren't suprised when no bridge stood there. The only option? Hire a few rafts and have the locals ferry us across the river. We continued biking and came to the main road a little while later (did I mention I'm in the tropics in August, riding a bike through the countryside? It's a little warm by this point).
At this point things got bad - we first took a left and rode for about 2 miles. Then we realized that we should have gone right, so we turned around and went back those 2 miles PLUS another 3 miles. At this point we decided to confer with some locals who made it clear (even though they spoke no English) that we were somewhere completely different than we believed! We figure in retrospect that we had screwed up pretty early on and that we were just going back and forth for nothing (grrr!)
Once we realized where we were, our options were to bike all the way back to Yangshuo (about 10 miles at this point) or hire some locals to float us down the river on their rafts for an hour and a half (and a lot of money). Both of these woudl have meant missing the spelunking expidition we had already paid for. Then, I had a brilliant idea. We went across the street to where some covered trucks were parked and convinced one of the locals to load the of us, along with our bikes into the back of the truck and drive us to the cave. This wasn't any sort of normal human transport - in fact this truck was used to transport livestock (literally). After half our hour of bone jarring riding we arrived and went through the cave. I can't say the cave was my favorite, but it was a good time and the others seemed to really enjoy it.
The ride home was pretty uneventful and we soon found ourselves back in Wei's house where we devoured dinner (we had missed lunch). Soon afterwards we all passed out.
Today I'm going to buy another pair of shorts in town, and get a haircut.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew
posted by Andrew at
10:02 PM
1 Comments:
Wonderful adventures! Can't wait to see some pictures.
By
ChristineP, at 11:37 PM
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