Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Guilin and Yangshuo
We boarded a plane in Kunming in order to fly to our next destination, Guilin. Travelling by plane was a nice change from an overnight train, and after a very speedy landing (I believe our Pilot came in WAY too fast) we arrived in the very impressive Guilin airport.
Our guide raved to us about how beautiful this part of the country was, so we had high expectations. We weren't actually staying in Guilin City, but rather Yangshuo. The transfer from the airport to Yangshuo gave us our first taste of the beautiful countryside, which was full of limestone karsts much like Halong Bay in Vietnam.
We arrived in Yangshuo and checked into our hotel, which was just beautiful, and the sink in the bathroom was a very fancy clear glass masterpiece. After a quick tour of the town our guide took us to a rooftop restaurant/bar known as Monkey Jane's, where a girl who calls herself Monkey Jane (I have no idea why) works. I immediately tried the local specialty of Beer Fish, which is not fish in beer batter but steamed or grilled fish sauteed in beer and other tasty stuff. It was delicious but extremely difficult to eat, as it was chopped into small bony chunks. After a few games of pool (in which D and I rained supreme) we retired to our nice hotel room.
Of course we had to get up early the next morning in order to
prepare for yet another day of cycling. We had an interesting breakfast which took over an hour to come out, which of course made us late for our cycling tour. We wandered down to pick up our bicycles, which our guide had promised were very 'sexy' compared to our last crappy rust buckets in Dali. Sure enough, the mountain bikes were very shmick with 18 working gears and all. This time they made us wear helmets, which is an unusual safety measure for China. We also had a local guide to ride with us and show us the way.
We set off at snail's pace, and unfortunately our guide continued at this pace for the entire trip. This made it very frustrating, as we had these shmick bikes and we weren't even getting out of first gear. Luckily the countryside we were riding through was beautiful, with lush green rice fields, other crops and foliage, bordered by the limestone Karsts and bathed in a sort of permanent mist (naturally occurring, not a result of pollution according to our guide...hmmm).
After a short while we came to a section of the Li River. Here
we boarded a 2 seater bamboo raft and enjoyed a sleep inducing trip up and down the river. The raft was powered by a skinny chinese man (who happened to speak mandarin, cantonese and a local dialect) who used his long bamboo pole to push off the bottom of the river. The exitement hit fever pitch when we went over the 2 foot waterfall and got stuck, requiring our boat man to get out and push.
Later in the afternoon we came to Moonhill Cafe where there is a
strange hill with a hole right through it, which supposedly resembles the moon. After a tasty but greasy lunch we headed back to our bikes where hoardes of old ladies where desperate to sell us a cold drink or something else. One guy from our tour decided to give out some small Australian coins to a few of the ladies. Soon he was overcome by a sea of wrinkly hands all wanting their coin.
The next day we started with a minivan transfer to another, much larger, section of the Li River. We boarded a small boat for another tranquil cruise up the river. The scenery was again lovely, with a glassy river reflecting the flora and the Karsts.
Later on in the evening, after finishing up some final shopping in Foreigner Street, we got into backpacker mode and slung our full back packs on for a LONG walk to the bus station to catch a train. At least that's what I thought. We ended up cayching a bus for a couple of hours or so to the train station in order to catch a train for 14 hours.
After the fun, fun, fun of the train we transfered back onto a bus for a 4 hour trip to the port where we were to board our boat for the cruise on the Yangzi. During the bus trip we stopped to check out the Three Gorges Dam project. All we could see at night was the Dock which was horrendously big, and could easily fit very large cruise boats or transports. More on the controversial Three Gorges Dam project later.......
Our guide raved to us about how beautiful this part of the country was, so we had high expectations. We weren't actually staying in Guilin City, but rather Yangshuo. The transfer from the airport to Yangshuo gave us our first taste of the beautiful countryside, which was full of limestone karsts much like Halong Bay in Vietnam.We arrived in Yangshuo and checked into our hotel, which was just beautiful, and the sink in the bathroom was a very fancy clear glass masterpiece. After a quick tour of the town our guide took us to a rooftop restaurant/bar known as Monkey Jane's, where a girl who calls herself Monkey Jane (I have no idea why) works. I immediately tried the local specialty of Beer Fish, which is not fish in beer batter but steamed or grilled fish sauteed in beer and other tasty stuff. It was delicious but extremely difficult to eat, as it was chopped into small bony chunks. After a few games of pool (in which D and I rained supreme) we retired to our nice hotel room.
Of course we had to get up early the next morning in order to
prepare for yet another day of cycling. We had an interesting breakfast which took over an hour to come out, which of course made us late for our cycling tour. We wandered down to pick up our bicycles, which our guide had promised were very 'sexy' compared to our last crappy rust buckets in Dali. Sure enough, the mountain bikes were very shmick with 18 working gears and all. This time they made us wear helmets, which is an unusual safety measure for China. We also had a local guide to ride with us and show us the way.We set off at snail's pace, and unfortunately our guide continued at this pace for the entire trip. This made it very frustrating, as we had these shmick bikes and we weren't even getting out of first gear. Luckily the countryside we were riding through was beautiful, with lush green rice fields, other crops and foliage, bordered by the limestone Karsts and bathed in a sort of permanent mist (naturally occurring, not a result of pollution according to our guide...hmmm).
After a short while we came to a section of the Li River. Here
we boarded a 2 seater bamboo raft and enjoyed a sleep inducing trip up and down the river. The raft was powered by a skinny chinese man (who happened to speak mandarin, cantonese and a local dialect) who used his long bamboo pole to push off the bottom of the river. The exitement hit fever pitch when we went over the 2 foot waterfall and got stuck, requiring our boat man to get out and push.
Later in the afternoon we came to Moonhill Cafe where there is a
strange hill with a hole right through it, which supposedly resembles the moon. After a tasty but greasy lunch we headed back to our bikes where hoardes of old ladies where desperate to sell us a cold drink or something else. One guy from our tour decided to give out some small Australian coins to a few of the ladies. Soon he was overcome by a sea of wrinkly hands all wanting their coin.
The next day we started with a minivan transfer to another, much larger, section of the Li River. We boarded a small boat for another tranquil cruise up the river. The scenery was again lovely, with a glassy river reflecting the flora and the Karsts.
Later on in the evening, after finishing up some final shopping in Foreigner Street, we got into backpacker mode and slung our full back packs on for a LONG walk to the bus station to catch a train. At least that's what I thought. We ended up cayching a bus for a couple of hours or so to the train station in order to catch a train for 14 hours.
After the fun, fun, fun of the train we transfered back onto a bus for a 4 hour trip to the port where we were to board our boat for the cruise on the Yangzi. During the bus trip we stopped to check out the Three Gorges Dam project. All we could see at night was the Dock which was horrendously big, and could easily fit very large cruise boats or transports. More on the controversial Three Gorges Dam project later.......
# posted by Glenn @ 11:08 pm 
