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Published: September 5th 2009
Greetings intrepid readers!
Another week in and predictably a lot has happened. Lets start with a little more detail on our first evening off at the Showbiz rooftop bar. Much beerpong was played, with varying success, fireworks were loosed from the other side of the river at around 10pm (reflecting and echoing off the karsts) and there was a tiny puppy called Cash that Katie gushed over for hours. At somepoint around this time, we also had the following gem:
Katie: "You mean like the Mask of Zorro guy?"
Joe: "...Zorro?"
Katie: "Yeah!"
Next day of training was climbing on Low Mountain, which is directly in the sun (literally inside it), where we all learned the true meaning of sweating. Our clothes were saturated completely in about an hour. This is also the place where Andy and Joe bashed their heads on a cave entrance, after watching someone else do the exact same thing moments before. Day after this we went for a bike ride and learned how to save drowning people with spinal injuries. A chinese member of staff named Chao Ren (Superman) crashed his bike in great style and earnt himself some fantastic roadrash round his
wrists.
Next day was tyrollean traverse and orienteering. Tyrollean (a horizontal rope between 2 points typically with a large drop inbetween) takes a huge amount of effort to set up for but a mild thrill; a hike up to Treasure Cave carrying a 100m rope; climbing with said rope; attaching with complex anchors across the gorge between cave walls and tightening the bejeezus out of each with an 8-to-1 pulley and then some. This activity goes hand in hand with abseiling. We can't wait to start tossing kids over the leering edge. During orienteering Andy ran full tilt into a spiders web (collapsing over him like a parachute) and maniacally frisked himself trying to locate the spider. Orienteering got even more exciting than usual when it turned out many of the markers we were searching for had been taken away and the map scale was out by a factor of 10.
Next day was kayaking. This started with a few simple games (at least 3 times more fun than usual when performed in kayaks!) that Andy and Joe's team got repeatedly threshed at. After practicing the capsize drill, Andy discovered an unreasonably large spider on his kayak, presumably
wondering just what on earth had happened to its nice red house. Andy doesn't seem to be coping terribly well with avoiding spiders and their infrastructure. For lunch we dined on the famous beer fish and assorted satellite dishes at a riverside restaurant. We then continued downstream to a cave, which we would simply walk through to our campsite on the other side of the karst. No problem. The cave's steep sides were coated in a thick slippery mud which caused everyone to very quickly find the lowest potential energy (whether intentionally or not): a muddy stream in the middle. Flipflops didn't aid the rapidly escalating traction situation. Furthermore, the cave was dark by this point and for some reason we only had 4 headtorches between 26 of us (nice one, future outdoor adventure guides). Things were OK (we were enjoying the teambuilding aspects of this jaunt) until someone discovered a snake, innocently but sinisterly (we didn't realise this was possible either) coiled on a ledge not a metre away. This caused widespread panic for a few minutes. Once everyone had had a good look at Monsieur Le Snake we decided to carry on. About 3m further on, another much
larger serpent was found packed into a convenient crack we had been using as a handhold against the muddy current. A dark, muddy cave chock full of snakes? Perhaps not. Time to leave Snake Cavern. A fellow newbie guide, Chris (from Manchester...or Gunchester as he calls it), rightly pointed out that "snakes have no compassion". You can't bargain with a snake. This observation was later joined by "poo has no fear", but for different, unrelated and entirely self-explanatory reasons.
After our hasty retreat we made our way to a large riverside clearing where we would camp for the night. First order of the business was to seperate into groups and prepare the tents, dunny, water station, dinner and firewood: Man Joe collect firewood. Katie Andy make meal. Preparation of the meal was altered slightly to accommodate 'the group', but all ended well, thankfully... even though some people refused to eat without the addition of copious amounts of salt and oil; bought especially to ruin the sauce, it would seem. The evening decended into drinking and gathering round the cool kids area - need we say where that was? Afa suggested, in Chinese, that he and Derek take a girl
each - Katie and Katy - not realising that Katy, sat next to him, spoke Chinese... Afa then set about improving the game of guess the lie by insisting that we include something "sexy." Afa's sexy component seemed to be that he'd taken a number 2 in the river that evening. Notably, Wade had required the removal of a ring (of sorts). More drinking. More banter. A game of would you rather, which was shamefully poor without Gethin's efforts. Finally, we all made our way back to the tents.
After a night of surprisingly good sleep we had a brief trek to the site of the proposed "Ecovillage". The plan is to create a 100% sustainable tent village that will be the home for the schooltrip children, rather than hotels in Yangshuo which is the current modus operandi. This was the very last component of training. Back at Yangshuo we had the customary dip in the river from where we watched fireworks explode above us, lighting the night sky with the sounds of thunder. We also enjoyed two of our new pastimes; Jellyfishing (a new swimming stroke developed by Joe) and ruminating - which requires a mid-range stare and
venting of air through the nose just below the water surface, a la water buffalo. Joe has acquired the nickname "Faffbag" because he can't do anything without first faffing for 15 minutes. He would, however, like to point out that he didn't carelessly lose his phone due to poor planning and preparation as some people did. *Cough*Katie*cough*. To celebrate the completion of training we had some drinks in the Lizard Lounge (whats new?) and then headed to Loove, where we enjoyed tequila shots and a sheesha with a number of other newbie guides until the small hours.
The next few days were days off for everyone. We used this time to cafe crawl, in search of feasible coffees. They hard to come by, unless in iced format. The majority of coffee found here seems to come from the same provider (hardly rambunctious or full bodied or autumnal leaf harvest essences at all). An unlikely looking cafe proved to be the best, with a fantastic cushioned upstairs area for reading, musing and ruminating (if you will), decorated with a number of stylised pictures and items of paraphenalia. Pictures to follow as soon as the Lizard Lounge computers are beaten into
submission (this may take some time). In the evening of the second day we dined at a really nice muslim restaurant. Joe was bet 300yuan (about 30 pounds) by Katy he couldn't eat two gigantic spoonfuls of chillis and chilli seeds in oil. They both turned out to be losers in the end, despite Joe being 300 yuan better off. Whilst in the toilet for 20 minutes the next morning Joe had plenty of time to reflect on the value of money.
Katie was selected to go to Nanbeihu with half of the staff (they are there now), and is the inspiration for this entry's title quote. Nanbeihu, near Shanghai, is a 24hour train journey away and is one of the sites/outdoor activity centres The Company uses for its adventures holidays - not everything is based round Yangshuo - complete with high ropes course, coffee and pancakes. Look out for the special Nan' edition of the blog in a couple of weeks! Andy and Joe are not even slightly jealous about this frankly average sounding trip and not bitter at all that they have 2 weeks of nothing instead. At the end of this 2 weeks of void, Andy
will be group leading a group of bigwig VW executives (who have made a special request for cold beer at the end of each day) and Joe will be activity leading mountain biking for a school group.
Joe and Andy have just completed (and passed!) a 4 day wilderness first aid course, which was huge amounts of fun. Katie couldn't do it this time because she is in Nan'. Ha. Highlights of this included fake wounds (pictures to follow...with luck), a reduced sense of powerlessness when presented with a damaged person, a mass disaster simulation at the end and a sticker. As far as we hear from Nan', Katie is hiking with a group of namby pambies from Korea, but they are shaping up rapidly under a relentless tongue whipping. Andy and Joe have time to relax, be themselves and generally have a good time for the next week until Katie gets back.
Chinacrew!
CT, HD, OR
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David
non-member comment
Wow, your pics look amazing. I was tempted to line up my super IBM internship against this, but who am I kidding?? I sit in a darkened room with bits of paper and chairs and stuff, and *you* are in China!! So envious! I am also pleased to note that despite being in a new country, even a country as exotic as China, your 'faffing' was severe enough to warrant a mention in the blog, Joe :P Enjoy every second of it, you lucky devils.