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We arrived in Guilin at 5am and boarded a bus to Yangshuo, about an hour away. Most people fell asleep on the bus, given the early hour, but I stayed awake and was treated to the wonderful, yet slightly eerie sight of the Karst hills as day began to break. The hills jut out of the otherwise flat land at irregular intervals, each one different to the next, both in size and shape. It is very strange, particularly in the early morning. I also saw a water buffalo being led along the road by a farmer, which also made me smile. Indeed, since leaving our last big city, Chengdu, we had seen a lot more of rural China. Gone were the flashing neon signs and western brand names, and not before time. Yangshuo, from a landscape point of view, is the China I had been looking forward to seeing.
The town itself is tiny by Chinese standards (a mere 500,000 pah!) and a popular destination with tourists, both Chinese and Westerners. As a result, it is a bit more like a backpacker resort than anything, full of cafés, restaurants, guesthouses and bars, all advertising internet access and cheap beer. In some
ways, but for some of the wrong reasons, this made a nice change from the rest of the tour. In Yangshuo you can walk into any café or restaurant, pick up a menu, order some food and a drink, know what you are getting, and pay a reasonable price. In most of the other places we visited food selection was a bit of a lottery without the help of our guide - even in Shanghai and Beijing an English menu was hard to come by. This is by no means a complaint, but after nearly three weeks of relying on the ever patient Ricky, it was a nice change to wander around safe in the knowledge that life was a bit more straight forward. So, wander we did.
In all, we had three full days in Yangshuo, one taken up with a full day bike ride along the banks of the Li river, taking in the scenery and the "freestyle driving" of the locals. Driving in China is an art form. A slightly erratic, abstract from of art of course, where nobody seems to have priority, traffic lights are a mere annoyance and crossing the road can be a
touch scary at times. But somehow, it works. That doesn't mean to say that as a cyclist in a small city it is an easy task though, but we made it safely out of town and into the Karst shaped wilderness.
Another day was taken up on the river itself, firstly with a two-hour trip on a bamboo boat for two, with only a rather irate boatman for company. The boat is essentially a dozen or so bamboo logs, each around 4 metres long, lashed together with twine, two rickety metal seats strapped to the top. On the back of the boat, rather like on the canals of Venice, stands the boatman, who pushes off with another length of bamboo and generally steers down the river. The idea is to have a relaxing couple of hours in the sun, watching the world go by. Our guy had other ideas. Every 50m or so we were hassled by other river people to buy drinks, or food or a photo. And when we politely declined our guide took to ranting and raving at anyone who would listen - he wasn't the only one to be fair - soon we were sailing
in convoy of about 7 angry boatmen, all the time not really understanding what was going on. We offered to buy him a beer, thinking that might placate him, but he refused. Then 50metres further he changed his mind, all the time ranting and raving. Apparently, we found out afterwards, the boatmen had recently been on strike due to a wage cut, and had since tried to make up the difference by taking a cut of everything bought by their passengers, hence the frequent stops and general ranting. So, amazing scenery - Tick! Peaceful cruise down the river - Not really!
In the evening we jumped back on another boat to witness the locals fishing with cormorants. In all the trip lasted about 50 minutes, and given that it was dark we couldn't see a huge amount, but in a strange way it was worth it to witness such an ancient tradition in practice. Cruel as though it seems to us, this is how many people live day to day. Also, if any of you remember the HSBC advert that showed it, check out the photo of the old fella, is it him?!
The final day was spent
wandering the narrow streets, bargaining for things at the market, wasting time in cafés and generally waiting till 7pm to depart. We headed back to Guilin to catch our final night train of the trip, to Shenzen, the border crossing into Hong Kong.
The train was uneventful, its amazing how quickly you get used to them and manage to sleep quite well. Anyway, we made it through customs (the Chinese side) walked about 150metres through No Man's Land, had our passports checked again and went through customs (the Hong Kong side) again, then 40 minutes on the metro later and we were in the centre of Kowloon. Within an hour of arriving in the shoppers paradise that is Hong Kong we had bought the Netbook with which I am currently writing this blog, ahving realsied how handy they are for everything related to travelling - booking flights or hotels, checking out restaurant reviews, keeping in touch, skype, blogs....
We had the afternoon free so made the most of it by fighting the crowds on the main shopping streets - it's unlike anything I've witnessed anywhere else, there are literally thousands of people walking along each and every street at
all times. I imagined Beijing or Shanghai to be more like this, and though they were quite busy, they were nothing like Hong Kong. In the evening we had our last meal as a group, watched the light show in the bay - a bit of a letdown, but it was quite cloudy - then went out for some final evening drinks. And before we knew it we were checking out of the hotel, saying our goodbyes, and the tour was over. Thankfully, unlike most of the group, we didnt have to fly out that same day, and checked into our new accomodation on Hong Kong island for another 5 days....more of which later!
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