After Shanghai, we headed out to Yangshuo which is located outside of Guilin. We hopped on the train from Shanghai to Guilin, hard sleeper middle bunk for about 16+ hours. The ride itself wasn't painful, but the kids underneath our bunk was. 3 kids + non caring parents= DISASTER for 16+ hours! I couldn't wait to get off the train especially when they were screaming, running around and jumping on the seats in front of our bunks. I also wanted to kick the leader brat who was leading them but I refrained...barely... My backpack kind of fell on one of them--I swear not on purpose, but it was karma I like to think.
After making it to Guilin, back sore and tired, we got on line to purchase our ticket out of Guilin to Hong Kong in a few days. They didn't have ANY sleeper beds, we had to settle for a hard seat. It was hard seat or no seat aka STANDING! I took what we had and booked the hard seat for another 18+ hours to Hong Kong.
Finally everything was purchases and settled, we hopped on a bus going towards Yangshuo. We thought we were home free, but sadly the driver decides to argue with the traffic cop and that held us up for about half an hour. I was so pissed, I told them to refund us and we jumped on another bus. The universe really didn't want us to arrive in Yangshuo at all because after a hour, our bus wound up with a flat tire. Thank goodness there was a shop there to fix it, but that meant waiting for another 45mins before they finished. I was too tired to care at that point and really wanted to be at the hostel. Eventually, we ended up in Yangshuo but had to walk to the bus station for the cab to pick us up and THAT took ANOTHER 30 mins. By the time we reached the hostel I literally yelled out 'THANK YOU Jesus!'
We checked in and finally had a chance to register everything that happened. We were starving so ordered a late breakfast special and breathed in the mountain air. Our surroundings was just what we needed: fresh air, mountains and loads more trees. We were finally in paradise.
We spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what we wanted to do with our time there and ate dinner outside of town at West Street. Tried their local cuisine and they were known for beer fish. Walked around the bustling night markets filled with bars that had teddy bears chilling on lawn chairs and vendors trying to sell trinkets to passersby. We ordered dessert from a durian place which offered everything durian and mango. I tried their coffee with durian slushy and it wasn't that bad.
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Kayaking. That's what we did at 9am on the Li River. We drove for about 45 mins outside of Yangshuo and picked up a group of other tourists for the same trip. We arrived at this little strip of a road and saw life jackets as well as kayaks.We were told to get in and with no further instructions, we paddled out onto the river. A ferryman followed us with our belongings and for our safety. This trip would take about 3hrs down the river until we were to be picked up again and driven back into town. Let's just say I was sunburned quite a bit while kayaking for those 3 hours...
After returning I wanted to rent a motobike to tour around the surrounding area, but sadly the motorbike they had was meant for big American sized guys...I couldn't even keep my arms that far apart for 5 mins due to kayaking for so long! I gave up on that dream of a motobike tour and opted for a normal bike which was ok as well. I biked to part of the Li River, parked my bike and went to dip my feet into the river. It felt grrrreat! After 30 mins of just soaking in the river, I decided to bike around the other side of town until I couldn't anymore and headed back to the hostel to shower.
That night we had tickets to go to Impressions: Liu San Jie. Zhang Yimou who did the Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony was one of the directors and it was so...precise! It was insane to see a production that size (over 600 people) do the show. I knew I should probably expect it since he did do the opening ceremony but still I couldn't help but be amazed!
Yangshuo was brief, but so memorable and I would love to visit again at some point and stay longer!
