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Yangshuo, June 28-July 2, 2008
Entry 8 of 18 | show all | print this entry |
We landed in Guilin, a major city in the Guanxi (sometimes spelled Guangxi) province, on June 27. We had originally intended on spending some time in Guilin but our flight was delayed and once we arrived we decided we wanted to go straight to Yangshuo and explore Guanxi from there. When we arrived on the afternoon of the 28th, we found Monkey Jane's Guesthouse on Xi Jie (West Street), the main drag for foreigners in Yangshuo. Monkey Jane is a 25-year-old woman from Yangshuo who runs a guesthouse and rooftop bar. She's well known around Yangshuo for drinking her guests under the table, and we met her right away at happy hour, where she led us in drinking games and gave us some free shots of snake wine (rice wine with three snakes that have been soaking in the jar for over two years--Monkey Jane kept attesting that these were the best snakes for wine!). We ended up spending a lot of time there, hanging out on the roof with the friends we made.
Yangshuo is known for its beautiful scenery, which was some of the most breathtaking I've seen. Everywhere there are these pointy limestone karst peaks that seem like they're rising out of nowhere--there are thousands just around Yanghsuo alone. One day we rented an electric scooter and got out of town to explore the villages around. We headed for a cave but turned around early because we didn't want to run out of power. Unfortunately, we hadn't been careful enough and ended up having to push our scooter up a few hills and coasting down at 5 km/hour. But we did get to enjoy the beautiful view (and have our first experience on an automatic bike!).
One night we met a Chinese girl named Andy at the bar where she worked, and she offered to go bike riding with us the next day. We rode to a spot on the Yulong River where we could get someone to row a bamboo raft for us. We pent the next two hours gliding along the placid river on a raft, enjoying the view of the mountains. At the other end we picked up our bikes and visited the Big Banyan Tree, which has religious significance to the people of Guanxi, and Moon Hill, where there is a hole in a rock that changes from crescent to full moon depending on which angle you look at it from. It was great to go with a Chinese friend, so she could explain the sights and give us insight into what it was like to be local to Yangshuo.
After a whirlwind trip in China, Yangshuo was our last stop, so we spent a lot of time relaxing and decompressing before leaving the country. We had tickets to Bangkok leaving from Macau, so on July 2 we took an overnight bus to Shenzhen before going on to Hong Kong and Macau. It was hard to say goodbye to China, but we were excited for our further adventures in Hong Kong and Thailand!
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