Advertisement
Published: March 8th 2009
Edit Blog Post
It started to dawn on us that 5 weeks is not long considering the ground we have to cover in that time although discussing this at dinner one night we were quickly cut off by an older american couple who reminded us that most people only have a couple of weeks! nevertheless time is running short...
we crossed the border into china in the middle of the night and as the only two people on the train we were outnumbered by train attendants! the border patrol guards were friendly and everything went smoothly, well pretty much everything. we had heard stories of lonely planet china being confiscated at the border due to some controversial issue surrounding taiwan and it being marked as a seperate country on the map when it is under chinese rule, this map is against chinese consitution/regulations. lonely planet advises that you cover your guidebook and pack it away for the crossing so we did but we were quickly foiled. the friendly guard asked if we had a guidebook and thinking it best not to fib to a man with a gun in china we fessed up and he explained the issue with us playing unknowing tourists, he
Yangshou
Very Pretty! said he had to confiscate the book however we were very polite and asked nicely if he could tear out the map but leave us the book as it has a lot of important infomation for our travels and he agreed as long as he could have a look and make sure there was no other map or materials on taiwan, this was a good solution for us as we got to keep our book and i thanked him in chinese and he was very pleasant about it all wishing us a very good trip. we got off the train in nanning and had to locate an atm, easier said than done in a place that gets next to no tourists, we were centre of attention as we searched for cash so we could leave again on the next train to guilin.
we're in yangshou now near guilin for anyone who looks us up on the map and its lovely. the people are very friendly and the old town is very picturesque, lots of bamboo raft tours run from the city and there are loads of little ladys trying to tempt you onto their boat, although not very succesfully in
this weather we're having now its freezing, but they are not as aggressive or persistant as in vietnam. one lady asked us and we declined only to pass her ten minutes later on a different street and be asked again, when i pointed out we had already said no she started laughing and shrugged as if to say worth a shot. my favourite though are the slightly younger women who walk round together but work for different boats and are clearly not as dedicated to the cause as while they are holding the advert they are much more concerned with the local gossip than any possibly paying tourists. there are lots of lovely local crafts here and the bartering system is much more amiable, i had to buy some long trousers as its so cold and i tried a pair on that she wanted 160rmb for (16 pounds) they were a bit too short and i didn't really want them so was going to leave and she started bartering downwards to 100 rmb, as this didn't make the trousers the right length i still wasn't interested so in a bid to get a sale she held open the changing room
curtain so i couldn't change back into my own clothes! it was all done in jest and we were both laughing and she eventually let me change back with paul guarding the curtain! in the end i left without buying anything and told her if she had truly given us the best price as she kept saying we would be back, i guess i almost don't have to tell you that a couple of stores down i found trousers that fit properly for less money!!
we're staying in a lovely homestay with mr wei and his very nice family. we get breakfast lunch and dinner included if we want them and the food is fantastic. this morning i had a mandarin lesson with mr wei and it was great to have a practice at my pronounciation, chinese is very tricky to get the tones correct. this afternoon we went to Xing-Ping on the bus, the scenery enroute was lovely but the town was a big disappointment and we were glad we had decided against staying there for a night. the market was unimpressive and we were followed for about 20 minutes by a women who kept asking if we wanted
a bamboo raft trip, we said no thank you countless times but every couple of minutes she would ask again, i said no thank you in mandarin which she understood but kept following us anyway and whenever anyone else approached us she would seemingly claim us in mandarin, paul was happy to ignore her and let her do whatever but she was creeping me out so i kept telling her we weren't interested and even told her in chinese as well as asking her to leave us alone in chinese but she wouldn't go eventually i got a bit annoyed and told her to go away in a bit of a raised voice and she eventually left. we spent a while wandering the narrow streets and were shown around a temple by a local girl and saw a little bit of some sort of local play/musical before gaining a different stalker and deciding it was time to head back to yangshou where we saw some different stalls at the market as it is saturday and had a wander round the park before heading back to dinner.
Today was our last day in yangshou and we hired some bikes and cycled
Guilin night
They love their neon lights here! out into the countryside. we went to a place called moonhill where from different angles the hole through the mountain appears to change shape from full moon to crescent. we also cycled through a lot of local villages and saw some amazing scenery. we had planned to cycle to dragon bridge but it turned out our map was drastically out of proportion and it would take us ages to get there so we decided against it and headed back to town to get some food at our favourite restaurant.
Tomorrow we will get the bus to guilin and maybe head up to a place called longsheng where you can trek out to the rice fields.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 50; dbt: 0.086s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb