Happy New Year... Chinese Style

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We were thankful we’d booked a hotel near the airport the night before we left Shanghai. It was walking distance to Terminal 1 at Hongqiao. Small problem... we were going from Terminal 2.

Enquiries at reception revealed the presence of an airport transfer service. It was a first come, first seved basis and cannily we showed up for the earlier one about 20 minutes early. This enabled us to actually get a seat on the bus in amongst all the luggage that everyone seemed to have. The weirdest thing so far travelling throughout South East Asia is the sheer amount of crap that everyone travels with. Fair enough, you’ve got your standard luggage but everyone seems to be travelling with an additional box or two. In the airport terminals the luggage trolleys are fully loaded and you wonder if there really are any luggage restrictions.

The flight from Shanghai Hongquaio to Guilin was fairly straightforward minus a little problem with security in our hold luggage as Dave noted. In Guilin, after what seemed a fairly long hike through the terminal we found ourselves at a bus transfer into Guilin city. From what I’d read you took the bus three stops and then got out. All indications were that the bus in front of us was the right one and we quickly chucked our luggage underneath before settling in to the ride.

As mentioned before, China doesn’t have a whole lot of English language signs and the buses don’t tell you where you are. After a couple of stops in the city I asked a guy who was getting off if this was the stop for the train station. He indicated it was the next stop. Looking around a group of Spanish people also seemed a bit confused as to where we were, I said that the guy had told me it was the next stop and they seemed reassured. As it turns out the guy was wrong. The next stop was the end of the line and we had a little walk back to the train station.

Ducking inside the train station we found an English speaking cashier and enquired about tickets to Hanoi from the station. We were reassured that we could get tickets direct from there twice a week on Wednesday and Friday. Great, we finally had a break. Asking for Friday tickets we were told we would have to come back Wednesday to get them. Hmmmm. Seeing that we would have little choice in the matter, we realised we would be back in Guilin on Wednesday anyway so it would be fine.

I’d read that the buses to Yangshuo departed from the area in front of the train station... I’ll amend that. Near the front of the train station.

We found the buses and the driver told us to hop on before we’d actually bought tickets. Not a problem though as they soon came round to collect our money. Looking around we saw our Spanish friends and found they had been joined by an Argentinian friend. Having a chat we found they were all teaching in Beijing and had managed to get away for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). It seems there are a lot of westerners teaching in China. It was a long bus ride to Yangshou (1.5h) but eventually we got there. Unloading in the little bus depot we looked around trying to get our bearings. Having looked at Google Maps we knew we were staying a little way out of the town centre and started walking in that direction.

Staring around in wonder at the beautiful karst scenery we eventually realised we were a little lost. It must have been quite obvious as a guy riding past on a motorcycle stopped and came back to help us with directions. We were only about 20 metres from the hostel so I don’t know why we were worried. This was our first hostel of the trip and I must admit we loved it. Zake and Bella were so friendly and helpful and we met a couple of fellow travellers. Our bed had an electric blanket and there was a rooftop terrace.

Dumping our bags we headed back over to the town centre for a look around. We knew that Yangshuo was a major tourist destination and it being the weekend of Spring Festival the place was packed with a lot of Chinese tourists. The shops are totally geared towards souvenirs and everywhere we could hear the cry of “Bamboo, bamboo”. Every restaurant had an English translation of the menu but prices seemed slightly inflated compared to the rest of China. We still loved it anyway. We quickly had a meal as we’d been travelling since early in the morning and returned to the hostel as Zake had mentioned they were making dumplings. We didn’t think much of it at the time but we had quite a large meal. Something we came to regret once we were making dumplings and cooking them as we were quite full and could hardly eat any. Zake and Bella told us it was tradition to make dumplings together on the eve of Spring Festival. We headed up to our room in the hopes of catching up on some much needed sleep.

Our hopes were dashed. Around midnight, the sky erupted into near light and we were almost deafened by the sheer amount of fireworks being let off. This continued intermittently for the next few hours until we guess people either fell asleep or passed out from excitement.

Trying to sleep in after our midnight surprise proved impossible as Chinese New Year celebrations were in full swing. Early the next morning we were woken again by the sound of firecrackers and rhythmic drumming. Deciding there would be almost no chance of getting sleep we eventually emerged from our room and wandered down to the street below. We were in time to see the local dragon dancers performing traditional dances and accepting offerings in front of the businesses nearby. At each place the dragons would dance around and an offering would be placed on the doorstep. The drumming would accompany them and a long roll of firecrackers would be unrolled behind the dragons. The firecrackers would be lit giving off lots of smoke and red pieces of paper would fly into the air. The dragons would then take the offering before heading on to the next place. As you can imagine there were quite a lot of places around and the dragons were making their way systematically up and down the street. You could see the establishments they’d visited by the mountain of red paper before each one. Realising it would be quite a while before they finished in our area we headed in to Yangshuo and took our time exploring the streets before a leisurely dinner. We then had a quick catchup with our families and Jo, Ali, Si and Mike on Skype. During the conversation we decided we would go out the next night and watch the cormorant fishing on the river. A quick chat later with Zake and everything was arranged.

The cormorant fishing was pretty cool. We finally ended up on one of the bamboo rafts with a whole lot of Chinese tourists and waited for a fisherman to go past. It soon became apparent that the whole event was highly organised. With another raft on the other side of the fisherman we followed him downriver and watched as the cormorants raced through the water ahead of the boats. A few times they caught fish that were too big for them to swallow past the string round their throats and the fisherman plucked them out of the water to pull the fish out into a waiting basket. We had a lazy cormorant decide to get out of the water for a rest on the front of our boat which provided lots of amusement to the people around us. It wasn’t long before he was thrown back in and got back to work. Eventually the fisherman and the rafts parked up on the side of the river and one of the tamer cormorants was passed around for people to pose with (for a price). The cormorants, their work done, were allowed the fish they had caught earlier as a reward. In a while we headed back up the river to Yangshuo and disembarked for the night. Dave and I decided to try one of the local bars and had a couple of drinks before heading to a cafe we’d spotted earlier for some banana fritters drenched in honey.

Our last full day in Yangshuo was still overcast but we decided to make the best of it and hired a motorbike/scooter to take us out into the countryside. Zake took us to a nearby rental company and negotiated for us. Dave had a quick try of it before we headed out. One of the things he noted was that neither the fuel gauge nor the speedo worked. He mentioned it to the lady hiring us the scooter who simply lifted the seat to show the fuel tank and shook the bike to show us how much fuel there was. Not seeing much choice we decided to just go for it and headed out along a scenic stretch of road past Moon Hill. We stopped at the town of Gaotian for fuel before heading along what was marked on our map as a cycle/tourist route. We found Longtu Ancient Village and soon found our way blocked by an old lady asking for money to enter the Ancient Village. Giving in we handed her some cash and took the scooter through the village. The streets were very narrow, barely the width of the scooter, and paved with cobbles giving Dave quite a challenge to navigate through. Eventually we found our way out the other side to another road pave with concrete. Assuming that this was the right road we continued on. The road soon arched round underneath a bridge before becoming a muddy track. Now, Dave had previously ridden trail bikes and had a bit of skill on unpaved roads but doing the same thing on a road going scooter whose tires had little tread brought it to a whole other ball game. Slipping and sliding past rice paddies we eventually came upon a village who, I swear, had never seen a westerner. We had people coming out of houses to shout hello at us with massive smiles. We found this a little intimidating but quickly found the road out of town.

We soon found ourselves on a main road. This was judged by the size and state of it. Feeling relief we headed along it. The undulations were quite taxing for the little scooter and a couple of times we contemplated getting off and walking up the hills instead. A little while later, at the top of a hill, we had the curiosity to try and work out where we were. This was quite a challenge as it appeared the track that we’d found ourselves slipping along did not actually exist either in solid paper map form or the downloaded Google map we had to help us. Dreading the thought of going back along the track we continued on and found a couple of road markers indicating we were a long way from where we expected to be and on a completely different road than we had thought. Using our highly developed map reading skills (the tourist map of Yangshuo is definitely NOT to scale!) we found we were near the town of Jinbao on Country road X098 and if we continued on we would find ourselves near Yulong Bridge and could continue down a reasonable road back to Yangshuo. Plan decided, we put it into action. Success! We knew where we were. We soon found ourselves recognising landmarks on the map as we headed back to Yangshuo for a late lunch. After lunch we realised we had a bit of spare time as we needed to have to scooter back for 5pm so we headed across the river to explore the road to Fuli. That done, we realised we were done too. We were exhausted after our forays out into the countryside but we’d also had a lot of fun. We headed back to drop off the scooter before relaxing with Zake and a couple of beers at the hostel.

The next day we packed up our luggage and walked into the bus station to get a bus back to Guilin. Deciphering Chinese characters we found the right buses and hopped on ready to explore our last Chinese city.

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Photos

Dave found big bamboo
Look at the size of the stalks!

Comments

[Mike]

Just had Fire Alarm!!
Looks great guys...we have just been outside in sub zero temps! looks like you guys are having fun ... keep the pictures coming! Mike