Yangshuo

So now that my family has left for China and won't read my blog until the week is over, I'm going to say that the overnight bus ride I just took was kind of a pain in the rear. The bus was about as nice as the come, a brand new Volvo sleeper bus. But no amount of Swedish engineering can protect one from roads that I have a feeling have potholes on purpose. First of all, a 300 mile trip took about 12 hours. Yes we stopped a few times, and real early in the morning we let half the bus off at one city, but thats averaging 25 miles per hour. Unless its a brand new highway, Chinese roads either a. don't have lanes, or b. the # of lanes is dynamic, depending on how many vehicles are passing each other at once. For example one time it was 3 lanes going one way: a bus passing a truck, and a sedan passing the bus at the same time. The other direction was reduced to a bicycle lane. The road we were on while I was awake was only traveled by passenger buses and industrial trucks, a different sort than 18 wheelers in the US. Thats what its like late at night. We never got going too fast because we had to slow down every 200-300 meters for what seemed like planned 10 meter segments of deep potholes. In fact it was just unfinished road. The reason I think it was planned is because of the distinct edge between where they had poured concrete and this pothole field. Maybe its a way to keep people from speeding? But I don't need to complain because I got to sleep fine and the bed was adequately comfortable. We'll see how my family reacts to taking a sleeper bus in Yunnan province. Aunt Sherri said only trains or planes but my mom doesn't want to fly, and there are no trains where we are going... They arrive in Hong Kong tomorrow and I will go pick them up.

I'm back in Shenzhen now after an awesome 2 weeks in a place called Yangshuo, near the city of Guilin in Guangxi province, southern China. I went to Yangshuo seeking rock climbing after tasting it in Thailand. I read online that this was THE place in China for it so I went. On the overnight train there I awoke to rain and the normal overcast China sky accompanied by an uninspiring landscape of muddy farmland. I said to myself, "why the rush to get back to China? You could have gone back to the beach in Thailand and climbed for just as long without the expensive trip to Hong Kong, and you know the people down there, they are fun." Anyways, so I had to take another bus to the city of Yangshuo which brought me into a much nicer countryside, with Karst topography (small mountains with rocky cliffs and no mountain ranges, looks like they were pushed straight up out of the ground). So I walked through this town to my guesthouse, along the tourist street which was lined with cafes with western menus and your normal fake North Face jacket shops, silk clothing stores, etc. The good thing is that I love fake North Face jackets, you never know when you will see an exceptionally good one or a new brand or new design.

I think I've said this before but I stayed at the Karst Hotel, owned by the Chinese girl that owns the Karst Cafe and Karst Climbers, a rock climbing guide service. So this girl named Echo spoke fluent English and I went climbing with her and her other guide, a Chinese guy named Ajia. I climbed for 3 days and rested on Sunday. Some other people went along with us, 2 Chinese girls that climbed every now and then and a foreign girl that was really good at climbing. She had all her own gear so she just tagged along because she was friends with Echo. My hands and forearms were really tired each day, but I improved a lot.

 

After we got home I would just eat a banana pancake and chill. I found a good restaurant to eat Guilin noodles at and would eat 2 bowls each day for a total of 50 cents. One day while I was just chilling in the street out front of the cafe like I always did, kicking the Chinese hacky sack, a group of high school aged girls walked up to me and asked me what my name was and if I had free time to chat with them. So we walked and talked, then went and played some ping pong by the river. These girls were from the "Wisdom Girls English School". They were mostly from nearby Hunnan province and living in Yangshuo studying English. They were interesting to talk to, sometimes they would ask weirdly phrased questions like "During normal times, what forms of entertainment do you like to enjoy?". 

 

So mostly I just chilled, ate the same thing everyday, and went climbing most of the days. The weather alternated between rainy and sunny, but it was good overall. My first room had an interior looking window that received no sunlight so I would sleep straight until noon without waking up at all. So one of the 2 girls that worked the hotel called me a lazy pig. My friend Aidan came to Yangshuo after I had been there a week. I met him in Bangkok. I saw him on the street with a pair of cleats while I was walking to frisbee and said are you going to play ultimate? So yeah, he was in Vietnam and caught a train up to Yangshuo to hang out and then left a few days later for Beijing. We moved to a different room and split the cost. We continued to chill out for a few days, we rented bikes and rode out into the country, saw some farms, went to Moon Hill which is this mountain that forms a bridge at the top that you can walk under, pretty cool. I took him to the Wisdom Girls' Thursday English corner and we had fun getting grilled by the girls with questions like "what about your country?". A reply of "what about China?" usually gets them to ask a more specific question. I gave one of them my email address and now I'm receiving tons of emails in poor English asking if I remember them. I met a ton of different people in different settings so it is really hard to remember individuals. 

 

I met some of the guides from a different company, these were all young Chinese guys, and they received mostly Chinese customers, whereas the others got foreign customers. I hung out with them a bunch and they were really cool. Every girl that I meet says that I look really young and they ask my age. I was sitting in the Chinese guys' climbing shop once and there was an English corner going on at a cafe outside. A girl walked in and said to me, "you look really young, how old are you?" with a serious attitude. I told her I was 38. 

 

So all in all it was 2 weeks of chilling, rock climbing, and eating banana pancakes and rice noodles. I made a lot of friends and was disappointed to leave them. They all asked when I would come back, and I said I don't know. It would certainly be fun to go back, but I want to go to Tibet.

 

Speaking of which I still don't know exactly how I will do that. I don't think its extremely hard, you just arrange a "tour" and go. But my Visa allows me only to stay in China for 30 days at a time. After 30 days I must leave the country and re enter to reset it. Yes its weird, but China does that to Americans since we make it incredibly hard for Chinese to get US visas. So I have 3 weeks left on this stay and am debating going to Tibet and maybe crossing to Nepal, or staying around Yunnan and going to Myanmar or Vietnam to reset and then to Tibet. After that though I have to go back to Beijing, but I will have to reset it yet again. There aren't any easy and cheap countries to go to from Beijing, a train to Mongolia seems like it will be cheaper than flying to Korea. Who knows. 

 

So my family just got on a flight from the US to Hong Kong. I am now in Shenzhen with my friend Lam. Tomorrow I will go to Hong Kong to pick them up from the airport and bring them back to a hotel in Shenzhen. The day after that, Sunday, we wake up and fly to Kunming.