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Published: December 14th 2006
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Jen and Some School Kids Tour Group
Man is she excitable - more so than the 5 year olds!! This was to be our last stop in china!!! Seriously hard to believe! Time just flew! Yangshou was incredibly beautiful and the bus ride down (although a little hair-raising and loud - our drivers philosophy was to overtake whatever was coming and lean on the horn the entire time!) was spectacular, the geology around was just amazing. There was mountain after mountain, but not your normal sort of mountains. They looked more like humungous stalagmites and they were everywhere - forming all variety of shapes, from camels, to elephants and even moons!!!
Our arrival there saw the return of the touts - man did they come out of the woodwork and we trawled around for a while fully laden in search of the most reasonable hostel - until a very helpful ozzie stuck his head out of a doorway and recommended a very resaonable, clean and pleasant hotel called West Street Inn. And we had no complaints! Comfy beds, hot showers and a room of our very own!!
We did the usual meander the first day and sussed the job out - opting for a bike ride, bamboo rafting and water cave combo visit for our first day! And
On a tandem!
Scary and somewhat wobbly! it has to be said this was one of our best decisions. Although the weather wasn't great it didn't rain and we took to the bikes with Gusto - following our promised guide - who we were expecting to also be on bike.......I supppose you could say he was - a ruddy great big Yamaha, that we were expected to follow! Needless to say that we didn't feel the cold of the morning for long. He took off at speed and the promised half an hour bike ride to the river did, indeed, take just half an hour!!! There we were met by lots of little children brandishing handmade flower tiaras, which we felt were a necessity to become true river maidens!!!
These donned, we were off with our funky little chinese bamboo dude, down little waterfalls and over dams and ledges! One very near submerging had us on the ball for the rest, and after a second near dunking the pose to be adopted was perfected! The views from the river were beautiful and, thanks to our speedy little dude, we found we had the river to ourselves most of the time as we rammed our way through
chinese tour groups and zipped over the dams! The views were, of course complimented by our rather fetching tiaras and we felt we had done the river in style! 2 hours later we were met by another little dude with our bikes which had made it there in a funny little pick up truck and we were off again! This time following a rather nippy little camper van to the base of moon hill, where we to discover a rather unattracitve entrance fee!! 15 yuan! (1GBP) oh so tight fisted! Deciding to skip this, we opted to head straight for the cave. A 5 minuite bike ride had us at the ticket office, where to our suprise (and it transpired delight, the road to the cave entrance was hell!! and would not have helped the rather tender saddle sores!) we had already paid for a bus to the cave. This was a mini bus of sorts, with an interesting idea for suspension and a driver who had an interesting idea of gear changes!! We arrived though - surely all that matters! And got into yet another boat, to commence our cave experience!!!
This was incredible, opened to the public
in 2004, the Water Cave as it is known was a series of tunnels, caverns and caves full of stalacmites, slacatites and incredible shapes that needed quite an artistic eye to make them out. Some were a little dubious, but others I could see, from mushrooms, to pretty girls to jellyfish. All made from differing materials that result from dripping water. Some sparkled and looked fantastic, unfortunately though, photos don't do it justice!!! I think this was one of the highlihgts of our trip in China, it was stunning and we had a lively little guide who was learning english, but had mastered it enough to be able to point out the shapes and give us some of the background info. All in all it was fantastic and we really enjoyed it. 2 hours later and we were set to be off again, only to remember that this part of the journey now involved us getting back onto our knife blades of saddles - ouch!! We faced an hour or sos ride back to Yangshou and had no alternative but to switch from bum cheek to bum cheek in a vain attempt to prevent further pain!!!!! The views on the
return were great and gave us an opportunity to see the countryside of China, from traditional little villages, climb sites!!! and little farms! We eventually made it back to the Hotel only a little worse for wear despite having to dodge honking trucks, crazy motorcyclists and scary drivers!!
The following day in Yangshou was to be another day on the river, though this time the river li. This was supposed to be even more spectacular than the previous one, although in all honesty there wasn't that much difference and the boat ride wasn't quite so much fun. This time, after a rather lengthy bus journey, at the end of which we were met by a little dude in a rather fun little tuk-tuk that took off taking corners and bumps as if it were a race horse, however arrival at the boat dock saw the little dude demanding money in very bad english, with Jen sticking to her guns that we had paid in full and had been led to believe that the transfer was included - we did pay up in the end - it was only 30p!!! Then it was on to the boat, this was a great deal warmer although not a great deal more comfortable, having sides and large windows but tiny chairs like they give kids in nursery! Thus, sitting with our knees up around our ears, we were off, joined by 3 chinese, 2 danes and a french guy who were studying in Hong Kong. Needless to say with 3 chaps around, all of whom were over 6ft, Jen didn't see that many of the sites......(ok- maybe I didn't either - I do have a bit of a soft spot for the odd french accent!) but the boat trip was cool and our 'guide' did a good enough job of pointing to an English:Chinese Map to show us which formations we were looking at! All in all not a bad day, which we finished off by going shopping! No complaints there!
The remainder of our time in Yangshou was spent relaxing and enjoying the cheapness of it all........in preparation for/ expectation of the extreme expense that faced us in Hong Kong. However, we did punctuate our days with yomps arounds the local countryside, even braving hiring a tandem.......can you believe it?! I agreed to have Jen on the back of a bike with me! And I let her have a go!! I know I sound harsh but do you realise how often she stares off into the distance and walks into things, trips over, fails to notice cars, cyclists.....need I go on! She did however master it.....on the third attempt ....after a near miss with a rice paddy and a ditch! From our (much wider) saddles we saw yet more of some of the most beautiful and peaceful contryside of China, which was pretty hard to believe existed!
From Yangshou, we thought we would complete the public transport set and take an overnight sleeper bus! Big mistake, big mistake - HUGE!!!! The pictures we were shown were somewhat deceiving...you could say it almost looked luxurious....we were in fact crammed into little chinese person size pods, forbidden from putting our bags in the aisles and restricted from moving for approx 13 hours (although it was only supposed to be 9!!) with only 2 loo stops! I should point out here that Jen and I had decided that the experience may not be the nicest and so had decided that one or two (ok, maybe more) cocktails might aid the experience - so the 2 loo stops were very much appreciated! We arrived in Shenzhen (our gateway out of China) at a reasonable hour - totally refreshed and ready for action (ha-ha!)and after our last real Chinese steamed buns headed for the border. Border control and immigration were problem free and before we knew it we were in Hong Kong!
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