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Published: April 29th 2006
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Dali
On the way to Reed Flute cave Yangshuo is the unofficial convergence site of backpacker China. There's this pedestrian-only street, Xi Jie ("West Street") that is 3 blocks long, full of cafes, bars, clubs and trinket stalls to cater strictly to ole Whitey. You'll hear James Blunt in the cafes and Maroon 5 in the bars, and have your pick of pancakes, hash browns, pizza and burgers to remind you of home. More likely than not, you will run into someone you may have met earlier in your travels here.
Our first night out, we ran into a Finnish girl (whom we first met while in Mongolia over a month ago), who was now travelling with a UK friend who was accompanied by a Canadian girl who ran into 2 French girls that were now running with a San Francisco couple. No joke. It's nice sometimes to band together with western companions-- it allows you to compare notes and get affirmation that you're not the only ones getting a rogering throughout the country. But it can be cumbersome also, traveling in a pack that big. If you stick together too long, you end up savaged every night, battling a hangover the next morning and wasting an entirely
good day of touring.
That first night we bounced between 4 different bars, along the way picking up 5 Polish guys (not my call) (nothing against the Polish, Art, it's the fact that they were guys), looking for a place with the cheapest prices and the best crowd-- the SF guy said it reminded him of high school but without the cars. We found a decent place with 24 oz bottles for 10Y ($1.25) and stayed there most of the night-- while all 5 Polish guys battled it out for the one Finnish girl on the dance floor, the rest of us hung out at a table. It definitely was a good time-- the people were cool as hell, but again, we didn't want to lose sight that we were in China so Carolee and I made it a point to detour around West Street for our remaining stay.
So for our more productive time there, the first day we rented bikes (jeez, doesnt that get old?) and trekked out to Liugong- a good 2 hrs away. We got lost coming back and got a bit nervous as the sun was quickly setting, and we still had a
good 8 miles to navigate through small villages and off-road paths to find our way home. But we soon discovered that there was only one road in and one road out and so made it back safely just before dark. The second day we let others take us around, joining a boat cruise down the Li River which is probably the main attraction for visitors. It was nice- our boat was the one you picture going down the Mekong (like in Apocalypse Now) that we shared with only one other couple, but there were far too many tour boats in front of us so we essentially paid 40 yuan each to eat exhaust for 3 hrs.
The last day we rented electric scooters to try and get a wider lay of the land. Without a Chinese Driver's License, you're not allowed to command any gas-powered vehicle so we were relegated to these scooters that ran on batteries that couldn't power a Speak'n'Spell. They topped out at 20 mph and could go 60km on a full charge. We took them out to Moon Hill for the first stop and then planned on going to Dragon Bridge, a good 22 km NW. There were 2 ways of getting there- one easy route along the river on paved road, the other on a gravel path through villages. One of the residents we struck up a conversation with took one look at our bikes and suggested that we stay away from the gravel road-- said that our bikes wouldn't handle the terrain. We took it as a dare and took the gravel road. I thought she meant our bikes couldn't handle the bumpiness of the roads-- I soon found out what she meant was the bike wouldn't be able to handle the escalation up the mountain.
We were well into the ride 45 mins when Carolee's bike began to sputter and eventually started rolling backwards. Being a good hour and a half from town, we had no other choice but to push the bike while looking for the next town to call the shop (2 ladies in a garage). As we trudged along, a bus stormed by and skidded to a halt after seeing the unfortunate white girl pushing the bike uphill (we were taking turns!), shouting "Yangshuo?" much to our relief. So we negotiated loading the bike onto the bus (they'll let you board a jungle cat so long as you throw them an extra 20), and squeezed it into the aisle. So we eventually made it home safely, along the way secretly hoping we'd run into our friends again to drink this day out of memory.
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Arthur Ciszek
non-member comment
Hey Jay..no offense taken
You are lucky I am not there as I am sure I would be drinkign with my fellow Poles till the wee early morning hours. If I wasn't engaged, I probably would also be strutting my stuff out on the dance floor. I am glad to see that you are bith safe, and wish you both a Happy Thanksgiving.