Yangshuo

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Despues del autobus de la muerte, cogimos directamente otro autobus desde Guilin hasta Yangshuo, solo tardo 1 hora. A la salida de la estacion in tipo vino hacia nosotros ofreciendonos su hotel, de verdad que no lo queriamos y por ese hecho redujo el precio de la habitacion de una manera ridicula, estamos pagando 4 Euros por noche por una habitacion doble, en un hotel muy limpio y con CUARTO DE BANYO!!!No nos podemos quejar en el hostal estariamos pagando lo mismo pero compartiendo habitacion con otras 4 personas. Yangshuo es un localidad muy tranquila a las orillas del rio Li, el escenario es espectacular, montanyas de roca calcica, como a las que estamos acostumbrados a asociar con Brasil. Hay un mercado de comida cada noche cerca de nuestro hotel con una gran variedad de comida (?). Desde noodles fritos hasta ratas fritas en un palo, pasando por serpiente y hoy incliso he visto tortugas, en la calle central puedes incluso comer carne de perro, de momento yo solo comere noodles dritos, gracias!!!
Hoy hemos ido a un pueblecillo cerca de Yangshuo y desde alli hemos cogido una barco que nos ha llevado por el rio Li. Espectacular, pero debi decir que lo que mas me ha gustado han sido los bufalos de agua. El agua es muy clara y crece hierba en el rio, los bufalos se sumergen y se comen la hierba del rio. Tambien he visto a un hombre llevar a su bufalo con una correa a una charca para que este se banyara y comiera un poco, el bufalo parecia muy contento con la idea.
Manyana queremos alquilar una bicicleta e irnos por los arrozales, aunque no estan inundados ahora y no sera tan espectacular, queremos ir a otro rio que hay bastante cerca de aqui y probablemente a la cueva del agua donde hay lagos naturales y una cascada de (segun dicen) 50 metros, aunque no hace buen tiempo para banyarse. Ya os contare mas.
Al final no fuimos a la cueva, nos pasamos todo el dia haciendo el vago y paseando por el rio. Por la tarde nos fuimos a Guilin, para coger el tren que nos llevaria a la frontera con Hong Kong,lo mas gracioso fue que podiamos haber comprado el billete desde Yangshuo y no hacia falta ir a Guilin, en fin,se vive para aprender. El autobus era un "sleeper", es decir, que esta lleno de camas, en total 24 camas. Es mas comodo que los demas autobuses, pero se me hacia muy raro estar tumbada mas de 12 horas, un poco claustrofobico.


Bad Maria, Bad!!!! Sorry I haven't updated my blog for at least a month. I do apologise. I am going to give a flavour of our trip in Mongolia and China.
Mongolia:
It all started a bit pear shaped, the Hostel where we were staying had a very strange rule. LEAVE YOUR SHOES AT THE DOOR!!!! So we did, only to find out that Ade's boots went for a walk and never returned (they will be missed), the curious thing and I say curious because it happened a long time ago, was the reaction of the Hostel's owner, she went mad!! Started shouting at me, asking me why was I putting her in that position, eh, hello you are the owner, do I complain to the wall? I never thought that a complained was meant to make anyone happy. The hostel did not take any responsibility (bas***ds!!!). So we went on an expedition to buy new shoes fro Ade. I think that we found around 5 pairs to choose from and Ade my loving husband took more that one hour to decide (talk about women going shopping).
The positive note was that on the same day we went to the countryside to enjoy the nature and do some horse riding, I must confess that before we went to the countryside I wanted to leave Mongolia at once (funnily enough we were in Mongolia because it was one of my utmost dreams).
Our driver was called Sukhee and was a really nice chap, our guide and translator was Batjargal (Baggy). The "roads" in Mogolia were very interesting at one point we crossed around 5 rivers, when in the river the driver has to look at the dimensions of the stones as the smallest ones indicate that you are following the right track, funnily enough we witnessed what happens when you do not follow the guidelines and saw a Land Rover completely sank in the river. At night the water level rises and Oh My! we got stuck in the middle of a fasting moving river, not funny, I really did not want to put my feet in the water, luckily Sukhee was able to access the engine from the inside of the van and he managed to switch on the engine and off we went.
The horse riding was "enjoyable", we went three days horse riding, two of them I had that mongoliad saddle which consist in a wood saddle, very narrow indeed and with not cushioning at all. The third day when I managed to get a russian saddle (nice and comfy) I, unfortunately, fell off the horse. It was very weird indeed, We were galloping, it was a lovely landscape, and suddenly I felt that I was fallig sideways, my saddle was loose!!! I put my weight to the other side and at the same time tried to stop the horse, who was very happy galloping and did not want to stop. When I tried to put myself straight again, the saddle went again to my left side at this time I could not maintain my balance anymore as the horse was goig real fast. I saw myself falling, I was going head first just beside the horse's head, and from there adrenaline took over, don't know how but I turned myself around and grabbed the saddle and reins very firmly, so I ended up sitting on the air, my head beside the horse's head but looking backwards, I could see his legs moving so fast just beside me I was scared that it my run all over me if I fell, but at the same time I knew I had to let go, I fell on my bottom and rolled, I finish on my knees, feeling very weird and thinking "I just fell off a horse". Ade was very scared for me, he thought I might had hurt my knees, but I was ok. Sore arse, and I thing that my body went into a shock as even drinking water was sore. I did not however had any bruises externally.
Mongolian landscape is amazing, we have sworn that we will come back as we only saw a little tiny bit, and it is worth at least one month stay (minimum).
We took the train to Beijing, this was a short ride compared to the ones that we were used to, only 30 hours on the train. We crossed the Gobi desert and arrive to the chinese border at night. They have to change the wheels (I suppose you don not call it like that, but who minds?). They put us in the air with a hidraulic lift. very strange indeed. Arrived to Beijing and we could not find accommodation, the third place that we tried had dorm beds and we were happy enought o take them. We were shocked by the amounts of people in Beijing, we arrived on a Golden Week, meaning that 300 million chinese people are on holidays at the same time and many of those choose to visit the capital. Funnily enough we became the tourist attraction within the tourist attraction, I had never had my pictura taken by so many strangers, I even had a request to poss with a child and another time a couple handed us their toddler, who looked shocked, just to take a picture.
The forbidden City was quite disappoiting, the sheer amounts of people made it very unpleasant.
We went to see the Great Wall but decided not to go to Badaling (the touristy bit) but to do a 10Km hike from Jinshanling to Simatai. Amazing views and very steep wall, indeed.
Beijing was very enjoyable and I feel I need to come back to find out more about the city before its charm disapears as the council is distroying all the Hutongs (narrow streets with markets,etc) to make space for shopping malls and highrise buildings, shame.
After Beijing we followed the following route:
- Datong, polluted, dirty city with 3 million people, the good things were outside the city, a buddhist hanging temple on the face of a cliff, 40 metres from the ground, although it used to be 90 metres (residues from the river during the centuries has reduced the altitud), and the Yungang caves, where you can find 50.000 carved Buddhas, very impressing.
- Wutai Shan, after a terrible bus ride, we arrived to this Buddhist Holy Land in the north of China, the little town of Tai Huai sits on a valleys surrounded by holy mountains and temples, you don't need to go far to find solitud and is very calming to enter in some temples and observe the monks praying and studying. The curiosity about this town is that it does not have electricity, only after 7 p.m. you can start hearing generators to bring some light, there is, of course, no heating and you have to request to have some hot water for a shower at a named time. In my opinion this only gives the place more charm (if only for a couple of days).
Question: What have I learnt up to this point?
Answer:When catching a bus make sure you have agreed the price before you are in the middle of nowhere, when on the road you can choose between two options. Option 1: Look at the amazing lanscape and submerge yourself in the beauty of the countryside. Option two: Read a book or sleep. Never and I repeat NEVER!!!! look at the road, it will only make you feel very tense, nauseous and probably you will even feel a tickly sensation on your left arm.
You have been warned!!
- Tai Yuan: from Wutai Shan we took a "four hours" ride to Tai Yuan, funnily enough it took us 7 hours to arrive, this was not due to congestion, bad roads or failure of the bus' engine. It was due to the fact that we would just not go anywhere if there was not a full bus, therefore if there was an empty seat we go start going round and round little villages to find more people. This can be seen as a pain on the backside but if you are not in a hurry there is not better way to see this villages where tourist just do not arrive.
Tai Yuan was again another polluted city, with nothing very significant, just massive flower displays and a jungle of concrete. We only stayed there for one night.
Xi'an: Well, well, now we are talking, I really though I was not going to find a nice city but Beijing, well Xi'an is nice, food is really nice, markets are nice, city is clean and it has got a city wall!!!! We really enjoyed Xi'an, even did some shopping (Xmas pressies an' all). Of course the highlight of Xi'an for everybody is the Terracotta Warriors, but what can I say? I felt very comfortable in this city, beeing ill an' all (terrible cold).
We went to see the terracotta warriors, very impressive. There is not much I can comment on this, if you see the photos you can see it all.
After Xi'an we went to Chengdu were we went to the Panda breeding Centre and also did a side trip to see the Buddha in Leshan. This Buddha is carved in stone and is 71metres tall, his feet are 8.5 metres long!!!! This trip was fun, completely independent, we sort everything out instead of taking a tour and oh yes!! we were so close to sleep on the streets of Leshan. The buses between Leshan and Chengdu finish at 7:30 and there are buses from two different stations miles apart. When we arrived to the bus station that we had arrived to, the woman in the ticket office told us that there was no tickets,in a hurry we took a public bus to the next bus station and when we arrive there we realised that at least half the population of leshan and many tourist wanted to go to Chengdu in the last bus.I decided to exercise my arms and make people feel the presence of my elbows. This was WAR!!!! There I was my hand inside the little window of the ticket office with 100 yuan and shouting Chengdu, while people tried and really tried hard to remove my arm and put theirs instead. At the same time I could hear Ade behind me mumbling some weird words and getting really excited shouting them. Finally we got our tickets and Ade explained me that he was shouting, Don't Push!!! or something like that.
From Chengdu we took the death ride bus, 28 hours in a bus full of noisy, chain smokers, filled with phlegm chinese people. Let's not go into details, please!!!
The destination was Guilin where we took directly a bus to Yangshuo,what can I say about Yangshuo: we were LAZY!! we did nothing, only a little boat ride up the Li river, really nice landscape, full of limestone hills and the most hilarious water buffalos, beautiful animals.
Near our hotel every night there was a food market with the local specialities, grilled rat, grilled snake and river snails. In the main street you were able to enjoy a dog hotpot.But I have to say we did not allowed ourselves to enjoy this fine food, maybe tomorrow?

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