About Yangshuo - Day 30-35

Wrote this in Kunming, day 38, but didn't publish it before now. Some of the things I write feel a bit untrue now, since Lijiang was quite a similar 'tourist town', where we hung out a lot with other foreigners. But before Yangshuo it was mostly us and the Chinese, (a lot of them) so Yangshuo was a bit of a turning point in our journey.

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I have an hour at the hostel before we have to start looking for the bus that'll take us to Lijiang. Sleeper bus this time, instead of train.
But thought I'll write some more about Yangshuo, since it contained several highlights of our journey so far.

When we first arrived at Yangshuo (had actually planned to stay in Xinping, but as more often than not on this trip, things didn't go exactly as planned) we where overwhelmed by the hoards of foreign tourists. Before Yangshuo we were used to seeing maybe 1-10 non-asian people a day (sounds like a lot perhaps, but is not. There are a lot of people in China, 1-10 is not even 1 percent of the people we meet everyday.) and know they where everywhere.
This also means most restaurants had English menus and Western foods. Even the Chinese food tasted rather Western in our opinion - less spicy.
All this bothered us when we first arrived, but you got used to it.
For the first time since arriving to China, you actually met people several times. This has happened no where else, since the cities are so big and everybody just 'disappears in the masses'. In Yangshuo we even met our French roomie from Guilin again! At the end of our stay we knew most people we met on the street, and it sort of felt like being back home in little Kauniainen. After all the cities with millions and millions of inhabitants, the 'smallness' of it all was wonderful, and being in Yangshuo felt like being on vacation from travelling.

On our 'vacation' we forgot all about trains and subways, only biking, walking and taking the bamboo rafts from one place to another.

Getting stuck in Yangshuo is so easy you don't even realize it happening. If you wanna live cheap ( - for free) you can work as an English speaking volunteer, which also gives you a unique chance to poke around in the minds of the Chinese.
We didn't do this since we liked our free time too much, and didn't want to give up our bike tours in the countryside. The English corner we got to take part of was truly amazing though. If some young students walk up to you and invite you to their school - go! Never did we think we'd spend several hours taking photo's, talking and dancing 'letkajenkka' with 200 energetic girls the first night we arrive in Yangshuo.

If you, however, are thinking about skipping Yangshuo because of the tourists and the tourist-ness of it all, don't. The countryside is worth it all, and you can easily escape all the humdrum by living outside Yangshuo, in the Giggling tree for example. This is what I wish we would have done, since then you could have enjoyed the amazing landscape all the time. But living on a farm isn't all too handy when you're a vegan.
When living in Monkey Jane's, on West Street, in the middle of it all, we decided to take advantage of that instead and tried out pretty much every bar on the entire street. Turns out all Westerners like keeping together and hang out in Bar98, not on West Street, so most of the time we where the only girls, the only foreigners and definitely the youngest. But we had fun, al though the partying wasn't too crazy, and bars close early. Don't expect to get a lot of peace and quiet if you live close to West Street though.

So, if in China I definitely recommend Yangshuo (even if just because it's the only place in Chine we've had good weather so far...). Rent a bike and just choose a path and go. Be prepared to bike through people's yards, tiny paths through fields and get lost. Constantly. There are no good maps.
Hiking was less fun, since the routs are a bit tourist-y. Didn't meet that many other hikers, but lots and lots of sales people.
But as Ruut and Sophia wrote, at least you have someone there to help you when you get lost. Again.
//H