One river - the Yulong

Trip Start Jun 10, 2008
1
15
21
Trip End Jan 25, 2009


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of China  ,
Sunday, August 24, 2008

As this is the land of mountains and water.  I'll describe one of each in greater detail.  Chronologically first is Yangshuo's less famous river,the Yulong.  I met two repeat-teachers having a bit of a xiuxi (rest) in yangshuo before heading out to their school's - Shawn, Orlando's finest, and Pete, from England, a for all intents and purposes, career English teacher in China.  Both were excellent guys.  We sat under the tent in the shade for hours a day and smoked cigarettes.  Also, Pete greatly improved my ping pong game over the course of just a few hours.  On Sunday, my last day of freedom before teaching class, we, along with Pete's Taiwanese friend from his hostel, Ethan, headed out to a swimming hole. 

It was raining pretty hard but hell, it was still hot, and what's wrong with rain if you're gonna get wet swimming anyway.  Plus, the rain kept most everyone else away so it felt like we weren't anywhere touristy at all Yulong 1
Yulong 1
 .  It was a 20 minute bike-ride to this swimming hole in the middle of some fields with a lot of surrounding mountains.  It was great because an irrigation dam ran across the river so the water was a good 10 feet deep and there was a 7 or 8 foot high bridge across the dam perfecting for jumping from.  We spent the afternoon doing backflips and hanging out.  Then we went over to check out this little sub-dam kind of thing all these kids were playing over.  It was a slab of concrete with an inch or two of water rushing across the top.  The local kids, naturally, were playing king of the hill - wrestling each other off this super slippery dam into the water on both sides.  We joined in and it was good fun - despite getting creamed by these 7-12 yr old kids.  They're like little water monkeys, they must do this all day, everyday.  We tried that sumo-esque push-wrestling thing and they could just slide us, theoretically grown men, all the way across this algae-covered thing without slipping an inch.  We chatted with them a bit in Chinese.  A good time was had by all.  This was the closest I've been thus far to saying forget graduating, I can just stay in China the rest of my of life.  Don't worry, I won't do that... probably.
Slideshow Print this entry Yangshuo hotels