Yangshuo
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
6
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Yangshuo,
Guangxi Zhuang,
China
Friday, September 26, 2008
The heat of Guilin and Yangshuo was way more intense than we expected. The temperature was well over 30 degrees with a very high humidity level. It felt like a humidex of nearly 45 degrees to me, but fortunately we had reserved rooms with air-conditioning at the Giggling Tree and Flowers in Guilin.
After we arrived at Giggling Tree, it was around 13:30 and we were both quite hungry
Giggling Tree Hostel
. Being situated way in the countryside, we elected to eat a meal from the hostel. Lisa ordered BLT baguette (16 RMB) and I ordered "rice with meat" (after I found out the meat was chicken or beer - also 16 RMB). Both of our meals were quite delicious, but Lisa's was not as large as the Asian dishes always seemed to be.Lisa noticed that a local woman had set up a food stand right next door, so after our meal she went to explore it. There was a British man with a Chinese woman accompanying him, so Lisa asked him how much the food and beer was there. She was happy to find out that everything was less than half price and the large local beers (Guillin Liquan) were only 5 RMB each. She ordered one and found out that they were also ice cold.
While Lisa was enjoying her cold beer, I shared my table with a couple from Switzerland and found out they had been in the area for almost a week. They told us that they found this place while riding their bikes through the countryside and bumped into the managers in a swim-hole in the local river. This was great news because it was so hot I think I may have been melting. Once Lisa came back, we played a quick game of Yatzi (not Yahtzee) and then they offered to take us to the swim-hole they found.
We quickly got changed, grabbed the swimming gear and four more cold bottles of beer and then went off to the river
Li River
. We went through some rice fields and after 10 minutes or so we hit a short waterfall on the local river. Within a few seconds, we were all in the water. The water was quite hot for a river, probably close to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and quite clean and enjoyable. There were three local Chinese boys that were already swimming and once they saw my mask and snorkel they came up to me right away. I let them all take turns playing with the equipment and they seemed very entertained with it.We were eventually joined by the people that are managing the hostel and we all spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in the river. By the time we got out and showered off, it was time for dinner. With it being dark out, we decided to eat at the hostel again. Lisa ordered "lemon chicken" (32 RMB) and I got a "fried beef noodle" dish (17 RMB). Both dishes were quite incredible, but especially Lisa's lemon chicken.
We are both sitting on a lantern/candle lighted terrace now. I am surprised that there is fast and reliable Internet here. This is one of the most beautiful places that I have seen in my life and it was well worth the trip out here. I am all caught up with the story now, so soon we will head to our bed. This will be the first time we have had a mosquito net for our bed, so obviously we intend to use it.
Aside from a small spider emergency with Lisa, the night was pretty uneventful
Bamboo rafting on the Li River
. The spider was not nearly as big as the fist-sized one that Lisa and other people had seen, but I killed it anyhow (emergency over.) I was disappointed that I did not get to see a giant spider that was scaring the girls staying at The Giggling Tree,The next day we woke up and decided to go for a walk. We didn't really have any particular destination in mind, but we walked toward Yangshuo and before we knew it we were half way. It was really, really hot; probably around 35 degrees and humidity around 85-90%. Fortunately there was lots of shade and food stalls selling cigarettes and drinks. We stopped after a kilometer or two at a place and decided to have a large local beer (7 RMB). The woman that sold us the beer quickly got us seats and soon brought out some green oranges, which were really easy to peel, seedless, juicy and sweet.
The first beer went down so well that we decided to have another. The sales-woman offered us another green orange so Lisa tried to pay her a few RMB for what she had given us. She took the 2 RMB and gave us the whole bag that she had brought out, about 8 all together. After we finished up our beer and oranges, we said "bye bye" ad continued on our way.
The next few kilometers were much easier than the first few and after another hour or so we were in the town of Yangshuo. We were hungry by this time and ducked into a local restaurant filled with local people for some lunch. Using the Lonely Planet Phrasebook, we managed to order some chicken fried rice (10 RMB) and took a seat deep in the restaurant. Soon after we had taken our seat, both Lisa and I began to cough and sneeze. The smell of spice was very intense and the restaurant owners noticed our plight and offered us a table at the outside edge of the restaurant. The food was decent except the chicken was full of bone particles.
Soon after we arrived in Yangshuo, we decided to look for an electric bike to make our journey home. Lisa had spoken to an older man (with a Chinese girlfriend) that managed to find one at only 40 RMB, which was what our 5 minute taxi ride had cost us earlier. It didn't take long before a local approached us and asked us if she could help us. She called a friend and after some negotiation we managed to score the electric bike for overnight (until 7:30AM), but at a cost of 100 RMB. It seems that most things in China cost double if you do not know their language.
The electric bike was a newer model and one of the biggest that we had seen. First we decided to head back to the Giggling Tree and then we ventured out into the surrounding countryside. It was a real pleasure touring around with the electric bike because the wind kept us cooled down. After driving down some random dirt roads and paths, we saw Moon Hill in the distance. Moon Hill is a local tourist attraction because it is a large mountain with a naturally formed near perfect circular hole in the middle of it. The circle is large enough that we could see it from several kilometers away but by the time we started getting close to it, our battery started to concern us.
We went back to the hostel to ensure that we could charge it there and one of the girls working there hooked us to the power without even knowing that we were guest of the hostel. I was surprised how helpful she was being considering that she had no idea that we were anything other than perfect strangers. Since we had agreed to charge the unit overnight (so they could rent it the next day) and we did not know if there would be enough power to get back into town the next day, we left the bike alone for the night.
We headed over to the Chinese food stand next door and were joined by the Swiss couple, Fabienne and Reto. We started drinking the local 600ml beers (5 RMB) and soon all of us ordered dinner. We had two noodle soups, a tomato dish, rice, and an egg dish. Since we ordered using only using the Lonely Plaet phrasebook, it is hard to say exactly what we got, but everything was quite good, especially the tomato dish. All four of us ate and drank for a total of 72 RMB (including 6 large beers).
I brought out my camera to take some pictures and the two Chinese kids were simply elated. They ran in front of the camera and posed in various stances while Reto and I snapped some pictures. We spent several more hours at that restaurant, putting back quite a few more beers. Eventually the little girl went home (I think she was being babysitted) and the little boy had a bath outside. Reto asked if it was okay to take pictures of the kitchen and facilities and the little boy posed naked again. He really liked to have his picture taken and had no qualms about being naked.
After several more beers, the Chinese woman brought out a picture book of "papa." He was a bamboo rafting guide, but I guess he was not working very close to home because we did not see him at all. The woman had an electric bike parked in her garage, so I was curious why he would not be returning home when the bamboo rafting seemed to be so close by. By the time we had finished seeing the photos, it was quite late, so we all headed back to the Giggling Tree to resume drinking and further discussion.
One of the stories I remember most of all is that Reto had an uncle in Interlaken that raised mountain goats on Harder Klum. Lisa and I both remembered sitting next to these goats when we had climbed the mountain three years earlier, so it was another one of those "small world" tales. When we were talking about the Bowling for Columbine, Reto mentioned that the Swiss owned lots of guns but that there was very little gun violence in the country. He also mentioned that he was able to shoot a target with a radius of around 10 centimeters from 300 meters. I guess that helps explain why Switzerland has not been successfully invaded in recorded history.
I may have drank too many beers that night, because Lisa and I had to get up at 6:30 the next morning to return our electric bike. Lisa says that she warned me not to drink after we went back to the Giggling Tree and that I said "You cannot get drunk off of these light beers", but obviously I was wrong. I felt very hungover after waking up, but we had already checked out and needed to get our electric bike back.
We did it in two trips; the first trip Lisa carried her bag, while I carried the electronics bag, which may have been too much weight for the bike. We bottomed out on any large divot on the dirt road that I could not avoid but didn't damage the bike. I did the second trip with the throttle at 100% the whole way and we managed to get the bike back for 7:40 AM. After this, Lisa and I made our way to Monkey Jane's hostel, where we planned to spend the next five nights.
After upgrading our room to one with air-conditioning (95 RMB/night instead of 80 RMB/night), we crashed until the early afternoon. After getting up and walking around, we soon noticed that it was hard to get a moments silence in this area. Monkey Jane's hostel is situated on West Road, which is the heart of the tourism district. The touts were relentless, several would approach us every minute and would not give up when we said "no thank you."
We soon found a restaurant, that did not harass us to come in, and we ordered lunch. I got a Yangshuo noodle soup (8 RMB) and some beef and onion dumplings (10 RMB), while Lisa ordered chicken fried noodles (15 RMB). My meal was amazing and we were happy to find out that from 5-11PM, this restaurant had a happy hour which included 15% off of every dish.
After finishing lunch, we walked around the streets of Yangshuo again, but with the constant pestering from the touts, as well as my hangover from the night before, we soon headed back to the comfort of our air-conditioned room. The rest of the day we just played on the computer and tried to get our health back. Both Lisa and I were suffering the effects of a cold that Lisa picked up in Chengdu earlier. We really only ventured out for dinner at the same restaurant that we had lunch at. I ordered "tenderloin beef with French fries" (30 RMB) and Lisa got chicken fried rice (15 RMB), but with 15% off.
The next morning we woke up feeling pretty much back to normal. We finally found a good grocery store with marked prices, so we stocked up on water and snacks. It is rough shopping at the other stalls lining every street in Yangshuo because you have to negotiate hardcore to get a reasonable price. We have seen inflated prices for foreigners in many places where we have traveled, but nothing comes close to how they do business here. For example, I asked how much a mask cost and the starting price was 650 RMB. Considering that we had read that Yangshuo was a great place to do souvenir shopping, we were really disappointed at how businesses operated here.
We made our way to the Li River and found a seat where the tour boats were arriving. It was quite comical to watch dozens of large tour boats all struggling to drop off the cargo of (mostly Chinese) tourists in this small dock. I had my camera ready for an accident but it never happened. There were fishermen standing at the dock with comerants, a large bird that the fishermen trained to do their work for them by tying a rope around their neck. The rope was loose enough to allow them to breathe comfortably, but they could not swallow the fish they harvested. Instead they were trained to return to their master who retrieved the fishes from their throats. Today they find it more lucrative to pose for pictures with the tourists for 2 RMB, although not a lot of people seemed to take them up on their offer.
After watching all the action at the port for awhile, we were both hungry for lunch. We avoided the main tourist drag and found a place called Sichuan Restaurant. This place had their menu rated for how spicy the dishes based on a 0-3 chili ranking. Lisa ordered a two chili dish called Spicy Chicken and Peppers (20 RMB) while I got the familiar green pappers and pork rice dish (10 RMB) that I ate many times in Chengdu. I ate a majority of Lisa's hot peppers though and they were so hot that I had to wipe my face so that the sweat would not drip off my chin/nose and onto my plate.
After this we cooled off with a frozen pineapple drink, which must've included an entire pineapple in it for 8 RMB. This really hit the spot, so we retired to our room until the heat of the afternoon had passed. At 6PM, Monkey Jane has a happy hour which has a deal where we bought two 600 ml local beers for 15 RMB. We also ate dinner on Monkey Jane's beautiful rooftop patio/bar. Lisa ordered Kung Pao Chicken for 25 RMB and I got orange duck for 28 RMB. The orange duck was something that I had never tried before, but I am sure I will have again.
There were not many guests staying at Monkey Jane's hostel and the rooftop bar reflected this. However a number of local Chinese girls came up, I believe to practice their English with the guests. We ordered a number of these happy hour specials and shared stories with the Chinese girls and one Belgian guest. We noticed that one of the girls had a book entitled "How to talk about China with Foreigners,"
After happy hour had finished, Monkey Jane played a game called "Beer Pong". It is played on a covered billiards table with a bunch of cups with beer in them. The goal of the game is to throw ping-pong bowls into the other person's cup and then they have to drink the beer. There are more rules of course, but I decided to play anyhow. I challenged the champ and then found out that the loser had to buy the winner a beer. Since beers were only 12 RMB, this did not stop me, besides the girl I was playing was only 5 feet tall at the most and height was an obvious advantage in this sport.
I managed to defeat the champion, who was a girl that I thought that worked for the bar. Lisa told me later that she actually paid for the beer that I won, so I hope to see her again before we leave to return the favor. It was a close game, we were both down to a single cup, but I am pretty sure she let me win. Lisa went to bed shortly after my beer pong victory and I continued to drink until Lisa came to stop me at 1AM. This time I listened to her sense and the next day I felt fine.
The next day we woke up and looked for breakfast on the main tourist drag. After being attacked by the sales touts, we made a dash for a restaurant called Twin Peaks. Lisa got toast and peanut butter (8 RMB) while I tried banana pancakes (10 RMB) for the first time. Before we left for China we heard that this was a traveler's staple food, but we had spent nearly all of our time here without sampling them. The bananas were super sweet but the pancake was very thin like a crepe. After breakfast we returned to the peer to watch the madness we watched the day before. We left a little earlier this time to avoid the crowd and decided to have some more dumplings from where we ate them a few days earlier.
This time I ordered pork and spring onion dumplings (12 RMB) and the same Yangshuo noodle soup (8 RMB), as it reminded me of chicken noodle soup and I was still feeling the effects of the cold I had. Lisa had fried noodles with beef (15 RMB) again which has definitely been a staple for us during our tour of China. These dumplings were not as good as the steak and onion ones we had earlier, but were still very easy to eat.
We had planned on renting bikes and cycling the countryside later that day, but by the time we finished our lunch it was after 2 PM and it looked like rain. Instead we retired to our room and relaxed until Monkey Jane's happy hour at 6 PM. We had a beer up on the rooftop bar and we were the only people there. After our beers we decided to head to a more familiar place for dinner: Kentucky Fried Chicken. Lisa tried to order a Big Crunch Combo, but the salespeople gave her a hard time so she just got the sandwich for 15.50 RMB. It looked pretty good, so I got one for myself. I noticed that the combos all came with corn instead of French fries, so perhaps this is why Lisa had a hard time ordering the combo. They get enough European/North American tourists in this town to know when somebody is not going to like what they get perhaps.
When we returned from dinner, Monkey Jane's rooftop bar had filled up considerably. Monkey Jane had told us the previous day that she was leading a tour group (since her guest house and bar were not doing good business) and it looked like the tour group all came here for some drinks. They were an older crowd that included some Canadians, but we had enough late nights drinking and went down to our room after happy hour drinks were consumed (around 10 PM) and finished watching season 2 of Oz.
We woke up early the next day and had breakfast at Twin Peaks again. Lisa had toast and banana for 8 RMB while I had a chocolate banana pancake for 12 RMB. The chocolate was just sauce poured on top of the same banana pancake that I had the day before, and the banana was actually sweeter than the chocolate. This was my type of breakfast.
After this we headed to a bike rental shop that Monkey Jane had recommended and got a bicycle for two. We had a choice of single bikes ranging from 10-20 RMB a day, but since I had never rode a tandem bike before, it seemed like a deal at 30 RMB for the day. We headed out on the main street in the search of the Moon Hill entrance, but a local woman pointed us in the exactly wrong direction. A few minutes after accepting her advice we were approached by a man on a motorcycle that tried to get us to come to Dragon Bridge for bamboo rafting. I have a feeling that this was the plan because the guy on the bike indicated that we went the wrong way but that we could take a bamboo raft to get on track.
We did not buy into this idea though and instead just cycled to a sign that indicated there was a scenic spot ahead. Before we located this scenic spot we came to the realization that our bike had failing brakes. Soon after this realization, it began to rain and we lost 95% of our braking power. We decided to turn back and return the 7 kilometers back to the rental place. I was able to stop the bike Fred Flintstone style, although my sandals and Lisa's shoes paid the price.
When Lisa tried to return the bike, the sales people told her that it was normal to only have a single working brake on a bike and that our bike was "no problem." Lisa started getting upset, as we were not able to use our bike down steep hills at all, and after some customers were scared away, they started to see things our way and gave us a new bike. It was lunch time by now, so we ventured out to a place we had seen earlier that offered hamburger and chips for 18 RMB.
We only ordered one at first, because so many American dishes from China had been disappointing before, but as soon as it came out we ordered a second one. We also had some beer with lunch since the large LiQ (Guilin Liquan) was only 8 RMB. After this quick refreshment, we were off on our tandem bike again, this time we went the opposite way we went earlier. There was much less traffic and the scenery was simply spectacular. We passed by old farmers walking their cows down the road as well as a pond that had several hundred baby ducks in it. I took lots of pictures but haven't yet looked at them.
After returning from our biking trip, we showered up and we were just in time for Monkey Jane's happy hour again. Lisa and I have been sitting up on the gorgeous patio enjoying the light show (they light up several of the local karts in color) and catching up with this journal. We tried some of Monkey Jane's food again, this time some really fresh onion rings (15 RMB) and some homemade spring rolls (15 RMB). Both were absolutely delicious and also quite filling considering that they are really only appetizers. I was hoping to take some more pictures with a blue sky, but I got up here a little too late. Now we can see lightening in the background.
I guess the food really was filling that night because we didn't eat more for dinner that night. We were hungry when we woke up though, so we headed out to the Havana Restaurant for some banana pancakes (8 RMB) and toast with jam and peanut-butter (6 RMB). We also headed up the main bus station to buy our tickets to Zhu Hai, which is near Macau. The tickets cost us 150 RMB each on a sleeper bus and they could only be purchased the day before the journey.
After this we decided to rent bikes and search for Moon Hill again. This time we rented two mountain bikes (20 RMB/day each) and they were both very high quality and extremely light bikes. There was not a problem with the shifters, brakes or anything else that we could notice, so this time we decided to approach Moon Hill via the path we took on the electric bike that passed by The Giggling Tree guest house. It was a bumpy dirt road that we didn't want to try with the tandem bike we had the previous day.
I was hoping to stop by the place next to the Giggling Tree, where we had eaten so much cheap & delicious food, for the cheapest beer we had found in the area but the woman was not home. We kept riding down the dirt road path and eventually we hit the main tourist biking path so we knew we were close by. We could see the hole in the mountain from a few kilometers away so it was easy navigation. Once we actually pulled up to the gate of the park though, it started to rain. Lisa was still not feeling at her best and I wasn't really only going to take pictures, so we decided not to climb the karst in the rain.
We really had a good time riding the road to get there though. The path had very little traffic and the scenery was pretty hard to beat, so we ended turning around and riding it again. We would find places to go off of the path and explore and we did not make it back to Yangshuo until around 16:30. We were both quite hungry at this point. We went to the Havana restaurant again and ended up eating the same meal as the day before, hamburger with chips (18 RMB) with some local beer (8 RMB). I guess we were missing good American-style food more than we had realized, but it was also the best deal this establishment offered.
We noticed that there was a map at the Havana restaurant with pins in it indicating where the guest had come from. There was not one pin for the entire country of Canada, so I asked if I could put in a pin for us. She seemed very happy to oblige and the owner and Lisa both took pictures of me doing the deed. We also noticed that there was a picture from the flood that had occurred 4 months earlier and the water level was really alarming considering we were nowhere near low ground in Yangshuo. The water would be just short of the chair seats and you could see fresh paint going around the establishment to cover it up. This was about the only evidence we could see of the serious flood that had struck only a few months ago.
After our meal, Lisa wanted to have a rest, but I still had lots of energy so I went out for another bike ride. This time I went about as fast as I could in a direction we hadn't yet been. I didn't really see much too out of the ordinary for this part of the world. Farmers taking their cows across busy highways, while traffic backed up, karts and rice fields everywhere, the stuff we had been seeing for nearly a week now in Yangshuo. I did try holding the instant camera to take a movie of myself riding around, but I haven't yet reviewed them to see how they turned out.
By the time I got back, Lisa had rested up and we headed upstairs to the Monkey Jane roof top patio again. This was the easiest place to get reliable Internet access, but it was seriously slow and I didn't get to upload more than a couple movies and pictures from previous days. It was a little busier today though, with a few young American and European guys enjoying some drinks. We ordered some more of the spring rolls, but both Lisa and I were still pretty full from our late lunch and didn't need a proper dinner.
Monkey Jane came out soon after and asked everybody if they would like some "hot pot". Two of the guests gave it a try, but Lisa and I chickened out. Monkey Jane must've been in a good mood because after offering hot-pot to everybody, she offered some of the "snake wine". She poured herself a glass and a young man from Italy also had some. I found out later that he had not yet seen what "snake wine" was, but Lisa and I were well aware and did not have any. I have already uploaded a picture of the entire snake coiled up in a jar with other substances and a clear liquid. Apparently it takes likes snake and it is supposed to make you strong.
It turns out that beer pong is a popular game in US colleges because all of the young American students that were at Monkey Jane's were already experts. Lisa and I chatted with some of the older guests and we watched as the American students played Monkey Jane and her staff. At first the Americans were winning but once Monkey Jane started smoking her precision was excellent. All of us ended up getting very drunk and drinking quite late. Monkey Jane is a really fun person and she knows how to ensure everybody has a good time, but it was a pity that this bar didn't fill up more. I can only imagine how fun the parties are when this place gets crowded.
The next day we woke up and knew we had to head out for Macau. Since our bus did not leave until 20:00, we elected to pay for a half-day at Monkey Jane's (45 RMB) and enjoy the air-conditioning through the heat of the day. We ate breakfast again at Havana Restaurant, more toast and banana pancakes and then went for a walk to the side of Yangshuo we hadn't yet explored (East Street). We did not want to get very sweaty, so we spent the rest of the day watching Lost and Cloverfield.
At 18:00 we checked out and I went to the patio to say goodbye to Monkey Jane. I took a few pictures with her and she gave me a free Monkey Jane t-shirt (that will actually be Lisa's since it was a size Medium). The people at reception offered to watch our bags for us, so Lisa and I wandered down to the Li River to watch the sunset. We took some pictures and watched the people go by; soon it was time to grab our bags and go.
The sleeper bus arrived a few minutes late and was already about half full with people. By the time we left Yangshuo it was entirely full, but after all this is a busy vacation time in China. The beds were quite small, definitely designed for Chinese people around 5 feet tall and I could barely fit in mine. We should've packed all of our bags in the storage below, but we kept all of the electronics with us which made things even more cramped.
The beds are laid out in three columns and there is a top and lower bunk to each one. We were both lucky to be on the top because the bottom bunks were getting disturbed by people walking by, but I got stuck in the middle column. Lisa was lucky to get a window bed, because you could only fall off in one direction. The bus ride was extremely bumpy and there are surprise turns which nearly throw you off the bed at seemingly random times. If it were not for roll bars, that hold you and your blanket in, I am sure I would've been on the floor at least a dozen times.
Thank god for motion sickness pills: Gravol! With just one of the magic red pills, I was sleeping within an hour and although I woke up many times over the night, I slept a vast majority of the nearly 12 hour ride. Lisa did not do quite as well as me, but we both managed to get a good night's rest before arriving at Zhu Hai around 7:30.
Zhu Hai was a rather clean and modern looking city, but we were both anxious to make it to Macau ASAP
