Introduction to China

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I parted ways with the crazy German guy I was with and finally found Gerry. These past few days we have been taking it easy...walking from restaurant to restaurant...sleeping in, talking to other travelers over copious amounts of coffee and Liquan. After a nice walk around the surrounding streets yesterday I talked Gerry into ditching his idea about renting the stupid looking electric scooters that seem rather popular with the Chinese tourists in town and grabbing 2 cheap mountain bikes. "Just for a short spin around town." UmmmHmmm...No map and 3 hours later we found ourselves biking further and further outside of Yangshuo. Encouraged by the Chinese tourists we kept passing on tandem bicycles and the like we kept on. Through a long polluted tunnel, through lush green lush fields, over seemingly hundreds of hills and small mountains, and past old mud farmhouses, little children on the side of the road pointed and laughed at us along the way. An ancient woman guiding a family of buffalo across the road flashed the brightest white smile and shouted a chipper "Ni Hao!!" to us as we flew by. This was certainly not the rural China I had studied so much about...the poverty stricken farmers beaten down by years of suffering and failed revolution. My first glimpse of life in the Chinese countryside did not match the image I had built up in my head. In fact, not much of China has. So far I have felt much more welcome here than I ever did in Vietnam. The touts have been friendly and polite. And, overall, the cities and towns feel and look much cleaner than what I have seen these past few months in the the rest of South East Asia. Of course...I have only been here a few days so this could all be senseless musing. But as first impressions go, China has put it's bets foot forward. I am not counting the times I have had to shut my eyes at seeing cute, furry, little puppies crammed into cages, and the story I heard of a young girl getting crushed by a big barreling truck yesterday while crossing a street near my hotel.
But back to our adventure cycling in the searing heat through the beautiful scenery of the karst mountains of Guilin....Just as we hit a point where we decided to turn around go back the way we came, a Dutch couple came out of no where behind us. A quick glimpse at their map and we decided to follow them to the nearest city of PuYi where we could take a dirt road along the Li River back to Yangshuo. Yet as things usually turn out...there was no dirt road to be found. The sky was getting darker and with no street lights -we were starting to get nervous. We crossed a long and very sketchy bridge of wooden planks laid across steel barrels to a little village across the river. But hings didn't look promising there either. Everyone we talked to seemed to know only two words: "Yangshuo..NOOO!!" After a failed attempt at hiring a boat to go up the river back with the bridge "troll" we backtracked through PuYi. Then...divine intervention... out of thin air appeared a mini-bus headed to YANGSHUO!! We piled in...our bikes and all and got the heck out of dodge. Phew! We high-fived and chuckled about it all the way back to the city along with the locals who graciously squeezed in alongside our bulky, dirty wheels.
We had a sun-rise challenge this morning. We stayed up all night socializing with an interesting group of ex-pats and backpackers. The rooftop of Monkey Janes Guesthouse was all abuzz with an eclectic mix of people from all over the world. I watched the sun come up with an old British character who used to roller skate at Studio 54 and is now living in Laos, a 50 year old African American guy teaching English in Northern China, a few interesting French, Chinese and Swedish people. Good times had by all!
Over a steaming plate of noodles and fried rice tonight, Gerry and I decided it's time to move on. Tomorrow morning we'll try and catch the train to Kunming then on to the Leaping Tiger Gorge in the Western part of the country for a few days of trekking. Big wheels keep on turnin'...

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Photos

On board
Our bikes crammed on the bus back to town. The locals didn't seem to mind.

Karst mountains of Yangshou
at 5am. Still stunning minus a pretty sinrise.

Up on the roof at Monkey Jane
The only palce in town with an all night roof-top bar and a killer view!