Yangshuo Hotels
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Boyhood Dream Met:)
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Whilst on the train last night, I started thinking back to when I was 8 years old... in year 3 at Mirrabooka PS. This is when my teacher, Mrs Klymovich first introduced me to a mystical place called China. I can remember the project vividly, with my summaries of the Great Wall of China and the pandas of Chengdu being proudly displayed on the back wall of room 3. This is when I first developed an immense interest in China, and have dreamt of visiting this amazing place ever since. So today, I can't believe I'm here in China... and have accomplished my boyhood dream of visiting here. With a bit of work and planning, anything is possible. I can remember back to 1983 when I use to pretend visiting all these amazing places, pretending to be a pilot of a huge jumbo jet, zooming around the world in my what I thought was the whole wide world, my backyard. It was kind of refreshing resting in my overnight train last night, remembering the good ol' times of my childhood and the fact that I have accomplished one of my life goals.
I am very excited to be here... ecstatic actually. I can't wait to visit the multitude of places Intrepid will take me during the next 6 weeks.
We left the clear blue skies of Hong Kong (can you believe it... refer to last entry!!!!!) at 11am. We travelled by bus to the China/Hong Kong border which took about 1.5 hours. I breezed through the Hong Kong Immigration section, but the woman at the Chinese border looked me up and down about 4 times before letting me into the country. Do I look that different to my passport photo? Anyway, without any trouble whatsoever, I entered this amazing place with a mind-boggling population of 1.3 billion people. Following this, the local bus switched to the right side of the road to take us to Guangzhou, in the Guangdong region of Southern China. This region of China is one of the wealthiest, as evident by the beautiful garden-manicured surroundings, huge level of industrialisation and commercialism and abundance of very tall apartments. Wow, what an eyesaw!
We had about 2 hours in Guangzhou before bording our 14 hour overnight train to Guilin. I'm glad I've had experiencing travelling in overnight trains in Thailand and Vietnam for this train was even worse than anything I've travelled on. There were six people to a small compartment... we were packed in like sardines. The toilets were a hole in the floor... feel sorry for the women who have no choice but to squat. Oh boy, Grandpa had nothing but complaints... I feel for the guide. I've resorted to switching off and ignoring him... thank god for the Ipod. There are two main classes of sleeping carriages in China... soft and hard class. We travelled in hard class which was definitely not to his satisfaction. I was quite neutral about the situation because I don't mind travelling it hard now and again, even though I've paid a premium for this tour. Talking about grandpa, because he has been to China 5 times, he thinks he knows everything there is to be known about the place. Sometimes it comes in handy, but most of the time it's a pain in the *** especially when he is belittling the guide which is a big no no in this culture.
I like the guide... his name is Ciao. He's about 29 and getting married next year. I'm glad he is quite young because the other two guys on the tour are more than double my age. The oldest being 81. His wife is 72. I have nothing but admiration for this couple for they look absolutely fantastic for their age and have such positive attitudes on life... so refreshing. My roommate, on the other hand, is quite a bitter old man. He's recently been divorced and most things that come out of his mouth are negative. Probably the most difficult person I've met on my RTW travels so far. The 32 year old woman from Spain, Ari, is an absolute crack up and I love being around her. I'm sure we will have many fun times on this trip.
We arrived into Yangshuo a few hours ago. We have two nights and three days to do a multitude of things including a river cruise on the Lijiang River, seeing a light show, going on a cycle tour tomorrow out into the countryside etc. It is a beautiful destination, full of western comforts. After I finish this entry and try to upload some photos of Hong Kong, I will go out to explore before joining our river cruise at 2pm. We are staying in a beautiful hotel called the Morning Sun which is Chinese style.
The immediate surroundings are quite spectacular, with beautiful mountains and very high rock mounds etc. I haven't seen much yet... will take some photos so you can share the experience. Kind of reminds me of Krabi in Thailand.
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