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Published: October 4th 2006
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there's not really much to do when you arrive at half past two at the northern station in guilin. i took a taxi to get to the main train station, not a very busy place either at this time by the way. to my surprise the ticket office was open. so i went ther to buy my last ticket to shanghai. this time this was a pretty relaxed exercise. there was no crowd this time behind and besides me trying to get in front of me, pushing to get his hand into the counter to get a ticket before me. so i could take time to "explain" what i wanted and really got a decent ticket for the right time and in the right place for my final journey.
still i had some time to wait before there would go a bus to yangsuo. i spent it with reading in the book i had bought in kunming ("The Reivers" by William Faulkner). at half past five i started to look for a buzs and was soon picked up by a bus driver who put me on his bus which was supposed to leave at 6. soon i saw and heard a
whole crowd of bus drivers running around and looking for passengers by screaming "yangsuo, yangsuo" all the time.
in yangsuo i was picked up by a guy and brought to a hostel. it was not exactly the best hostel but after some bargaining we agreed on a price that was okay for me. as one can imagine i actually was pretty tired at this moment. still the guy who had picked me up was able to talk me into some kind of boat tour. guess he was pretty good in talking people into something. i went by bus to the li river where i went together with some other people to a small boat. on the way there i started talking with 4 chinese girls who could speak a little english and i bought a stick with fried crabs on it and tried to eat them. there was not much to eat since these animals are mainly made up of armour. i had guessed so before so i wasn't really disappointed. the boat trip was somehow nice but also a little boring. i would have preferred to walk along the river.
anyhow, i got to know these chinese girls and
moon hill
for you nico :-)
thanks for the hint! we went for a trip by bike in the afternoon. we went for lunch to which i invited them since they were about to run out of money and for me that was really no money at all. they wouldn't accept that and after some quarreling they tricked me by buying an entrance ticket for some place for me. i was pretty impressed by the surrounding of yangsuo, it's a really beutiful place and a climbers paradise.
when i came back to the hostel there was a spanish guy who just had arrived. we decided to have dinner together and went into the city. while walking we talked about the hostel and he got kind of pissed because he found out that he was picked up at the bus station by the same guy as me. this guy had pretended that this hostel actually was another place just to get him there. on the way we passed by another hostel and asked if they had any beds left. since they said yes the spanish guy (daniel) decided to change. we went back and he started quarreling with the woman at the reception. he did a pretty good job and finally
she gave him back his miney. i decided to change the next day. then finally we went to have dinner during which he mantioned that he was a climber. he ´did have no idea that yangsuo was THE climbing spot in china and when i told him he immediately agreed that we should try to rent some climbing gear and go for it. the same evening we went to a climbers bar where they had a boulder wall which you could use for free. i got tired pretty soon but i saw that he was able to do some pretty hard moves. we decided to meet the next day in the morning.
the next day we really managed to rent some climbing gear and a climbing guide book. we also rent 2 bicycles so we could move freely. it was great! we found wonderful climbing spots and everywhere the other climbers were very nice to us and borrowed us for example some chalk which we had forgotten to rent. it turned out that we were both pretty much out of shape but we were good partners since we were nearly as strong. on our way back to yangsuo the chain
of my bike ripped and after some unsuccessful approaches to repair it we decided that he would tow me withe the rope. well we were quite an eye catcher for all the people passing by. a car full of chinese guy even went along with us for quite a while and filmed us. it was fun.
in the evening we ended up in some climbers store talking with some locals and drinking beer. though both of us were tired we were in a good mood and so we kept on drinking and talking until about 2 in the morning. as soon as i touched my bed i fell asleep.
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