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
Showing posts with label Yangshuo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yangshuo. Show all posts
Nov 19, 2010
Nov 8, 2010
Yangshuo - Day 30-35
Yes, we're still alive. There's just been so much to do here in Yangshuo that we haven't had time to blog. And Blogger has been playing tricks with us, making it difficult to access our blog. But enough excuses!
We left Guilin, traveling by bus and bamboo rafts to Yangshuo. The rafts weren't actually made of bamboo but plastic, and they had an engine, which killed our fantasies of 'a peacful drift on Li River' (but later we were glad that it had an engine, because otherwise the almost two-hour-ride would have taken forever). Later we got the chance to take "real" bamboo rafts though, and if you ever happen to visit Yangshuo it'll be quite hard not to take one at some point. Everywhere you go, they yell: "Hello, hello, hello!! Bamboo raft! Bamboo raft!!".
Arriving in Yangshou we were surprised by all the tourists (even though we'd prepared ourselves that we wouldn't be an unusual sight anymore). There are Americans everywhere and remarkably many families with small children. It cranks up the prices in some touristy areas, the only way to survive is by bargaining.
The Chinese really have a sense of business. When they see a laowai, they smell money.(We've heard them exclaim "Hello money!" upon seeing us... I felt I was their piggy bank waiting to be emptied of savings. Bargaining was a pain in the beginning, but our skills are improving exponentially. Our tactics have consisted of threatening to walk away from the deal, start off with a ridiculously low price and thus offending the sales person or just simply complaining. "That's soooo expensive!!") Virtually every Chinese knows at least one phrase in English: "How much?". The rest is handled with charades or by writing with a stone in the dirt.
Even in the countryside, when you think you're alone, you'll soon be trailed by a so-called "hello"-entourage (people trying to sell you their services or goods). When you're lost, it's kind of helpful to have someone to consult. We're not that annoyed so far.
So far we've visited a local school's 'English Corner', biked up Li River, walked between Yangdi and XingPing and visited our first beach (where we actually swam! ...although the water in Li River isn't the cleanest). More details of what we've done coming up later.
The countryside is amazingly beautiful, with green peaks and blue rivers. No wonder it's such a popular destionation for both Chinese and Western tourists alike.
Our hostel, Monkey Jane's, is pretty well located in an alley right off West Street (the biggest shopping/bar street). But ironically enough, though this is the warmest weather we've had so far, this is the coldest hostel we've lived in (second after that freezy one in Beijing). And it hasn't helped that the shower indicates that for warm water turn left and for cold, turn right. This has led to that only this morning did I understand that the labels were wrong and until now we've been showering in ice cold water, thinking we've turned the handle to hot when we'd actually turned it to as cold as it gets. Not nice.
Tomorrow we are headed towards Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. It borders to Laos and Vietnam in south and Tibet in west. We figured it might be time to start hauling our butts in that direction, since our visas won't be valid forever. There's so much to do in Yunnan, so it'll probably be a close call. Kunming's an 18-hour train ride from Guilin, so luckily we got hold of hard-sleeper tickets this time. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope it's a train less nasty than the last one...
//R & S
We left Guilin, traveling by bus and bamboo rafts to Yangshuo. The rafts weren't actually made of bamboo but plastic, and they had an engine, which killed our fantasies of 'a peacful drift on Li River' (but later we were glad that it had an engine, because otherwise the almost two-hour-ride would have taken forever). Later we got the chance to take "real" bamboo rafts though, and if you ever happen to visit Yangshuo it'll be quite hard not to take one at some point. Everywhere you go, they yell: "Hello, hello, hello!! Bamboo raft! Bamboo raft!!".
Arriving in Yangshou we were surprised by all the tourists (even though we'd prepared ourselves that we wouldn't be an unusual sight anymore). There are Americans everywhere and remarkably many families with small children. It cranks up the prices in some touristy areas, the only way to survive is by bargaining.
The Chinese really have a sense of business. When they see a laowai, they smell money.(We've heard them exclaim "Hello money!" upon seeing us... I felt I was their piggy bank waiting to be emptied of savings. Bargaining was a pain in the beginning, but our skills are improving exponentially. Our tactics have consisted of threatening to walk away from the deal, start off with a ridiculously low price and thus offending the sales person or just simply complaining. "That's soooo expensive!!") Virtually every Chinese knows at least one phrase in English: "How much?". The rest is handled with charades or by writing with a stone in the dirt.
Even in the countryside, when you think you're alone, you'll soon be trailed by a so-called "hello"-entourage (people trying to sell you their services or goods). When you're lost, it's kind of helpful to have someone to consult. We're not that annoyed so far.
So far we've visited a local school's 'English Corner', biked up Li River, walked between Yangdi and XingPing and visited our first beach (where we actually swam! ...although the water in Li River isn't the cleanest). More details of what we've done coming up later.
The countryside is amazingly beautiful, with green peaks and blue rivers. No wonder it's such a popular destionation for both Chinese and Western tourists alike.
Our hostel, Monkey Jane's, is pretty well located in an alley right off West Street (the biggest shopping/bar street). But ironically enough, though this is the warmest weather we've had so far, this is the coldest hostel we've lived in (second after that freezy one in Beijing). And it hasn't helped that the shower indicates that for warm water turn left and for cold, turn right. This has led to that only this morning did I understand that the labels were wrong and until now we've been showering in ice cold water, thinking we've turned the handle to hot when we'd actually turned it to as cold as it gets. Not nice.
Tomorrow we are headed towards Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. It borders to Laos and Vietnam in south and Tibet in west. We figured it might be time to start hauling our butts in that direction, since our visas won't be valid forever. There's so much to do in Yunnan, so it'll probably be a close call. Kunming's an 18-hour train ride from Guilin, so luckily we got hold of hard-sleeper tickets this time. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope it's a train less nasty than the last one...
//R & S
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