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Published: October 13th 2010
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Note: please creep the pictures to know what im talking about.
So its been about a week since our vacation ended and I am just now getting over my laziness to write another post…so here it goes. For those who don’t know, we got a seven day vacation last week because of the National Holiday in China. The Peoples Republic of China was founded on October 1, 1949 and to recognize that the entire country gets the week off. Its real similar to our July 4th. The fact that I wasn’t Chinese and couldn’t show my patriotism didn’t really bother me, a 7 day vacation is a 7 day vacation.
As usual, I was traveling with the other five dudes who came to China with me (Aaron, Nick, Mark, Tim, and Sean). The bell for my last class would not ring soon enough but when it did I booked it to the train station to meet the other guys. Being that it was the national holiday, many locals told me to get there early because there was going to be many people at the station. Shit, were they right. Now I know China has a lot of people but
on this day it felt like all 1.3 billion of them were either departing from or arriving to Guangzhou. It was madness. We got the usual fingers pointed at us and the jaw dropping stares, I couldn’t tell if because we were 6 foreigners or just that good looking but to keep my self confidence up imma go with the latter.
We were headed to the Longsheng rice terraces in the city of Guilin in the Guangxi province. It was a 12-hour train ride so I was praying that I would get a little legroom or at least an aisle seat to stretch my legs out. When I found my seat, it was not a seat at all, it was a sleeper bed. Sleeper beds are set six to a cabin, three on each side, stacked on top of each other. Luckily, we were all put in the same cabin; otherwise, it would have been awkward sharing a cabin with some random Chinese dudes for 12 hours. Got to say thanks to Aaron for the hook ups with the tickets, his teaching assistant at his school had a connection at the railway station and she managed to get it
set up for us. I was told that it was really lucky to get tickets that time of year because of the national holiday and all.
We arrived in Guilin and had to take a 2 ½ van ride north of the city and into the mountains to get to Longsheng. We met some other . American English teachers from Kentucky who were teaching in another province . Amidst countless games of 21 questions and looking at the amazing scenery the trip seemed to go by pretty fast.
When we arrived in Longsheng I had a moment of complete awe. I was surrounded by mountains upon mountains of rice terraces with wood cabins dispersed throughout the hillside. That moment quickly ended when I looked down and saw four or five little asian ladies nagging at my bag. They were the local villagers, Yao women. Since the rise in tourism over the last ten years, in an effort to earn some money, they meet tourists at the bottom of the mountain and offer to carry their bags in their baskets up the mountain. If I knew ahead of time just how far I was hiking to get to my hotel
I might have considered the proposition but ultimately I would feel really bad handing my bag off to a lady who barely reaches my knees and looks to have been born before the dinosaurs.
After checking into the hotel and loading up on French toast and fried eggs, I was set to explore the rice terraces. Now I am not much of an outdoor person, I’m fine with a comfortable couch and a good game on TV but after spending a few days hiking through the mountains I can see how people get juiced off it. We would hike from view point to viewpoint to see different designs and scenery of the rice terraces and although we were looking at the same thing they were all different, each time I thought to myself ‘this is so cool.’ After spending the first day hammering the trails and completely exhausted we decided the next day we would relax and cruise over to the next village, Pingan, to have some lunch and a couple brew doggies. Two hours into our hike we found out that the village was another two hours away! Four hours each way! I was beginning to question whether
this was vacation or boot camp. Last time my legs felt that tired was when I was doing two-a-days for football back in high school. Along the way we met tons of Yao women (local villagers that I talked about earlier) carrying bags for tourists to and from our village and the next with big bright smiles on their faces. It was real funny cuz all they knew were two English words, “hello” and “long hair” so every time we passed them we were greeted by the calls of “Hello! Hello! Long hair! Long hair!” The long hair bit comes from the fact that they are only allowed to cut their hair once when they are 16 as a sign to show they are old enough and ready to get married and take care of a man. Other than that, the women don’t cut their hair ever and in another effort to come up on a quick buck they were very willingly to show us their hair. Being complete tourists I threw em a couple bones to snap a couple photos.
My fatigue from the hike completely disappeared when we made it over the last mountain and into Ping’an
check out the baskets. and saw the beautiful rice terraces. Dragons backbone was the most famous lookout point so we cruised by that one and had a celebratory beer and just took in the view. We also had to take several photos with the Chinese tourists cuz they were infatuated by the sight of 6 foreigners all drinking beers sitting next to each other. We hopped in a car to take us back to the other village cuz it would have been gotten dark if we tried to walk back. Lastly, I got to give a shout out to Hannah the hotel owner, she was really friendly and worked so hard to make us comfortable. After the great two days in longsheng we were headed off to Yangshuo for some more shenanigans and outdoor activities…Ill write about that soon but right now I got to get back to school to teach the little rugrats!
Peace!
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Mary
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Vacation blog
Ronan, You are having the best possible time and doing just what is right to see the country. And you thought playing basketball was hard work, how about that walk! I bet those children are awed by their tall teacher. I'm so happy that you are having this exciting experience. Love, Mary