9/6 In the evening we had a very nice and relaxing time in the hostel
common room having very tasty claypots and dumplings and watching
movies
9/7 I got up early to go for a long bike ride. As I was adjusting my
bike seat in the main pedestrian street, some older gentleman came up
and asked where I was going and where I had rented the bike as
everywhere he had asked was expensive. So I told him where I had and
where I was going. He asked if he could tag along. I tried to be
nice about saying know by saying that I would be riding fast, but he
said he would keep up. I should have just said I wanted some time by
myself. So I waited for him to go rent a bike and go get his fancy
camera equipment (he shoots on a 6cm film camera with special light
meters and the like). I sort of felt like ditching him while he went
to get his stuff, since he wouldn't have really been a loss at
anything, but then decided that was bad karma and waited. The good
thing was that he was fast on the bike, but the bad thing was that
whenever he wanted to take photos it took him a while to set up (i was
in a bit of a time cruch bc I wanted to do 2 things in one day that
normally you would do on separate days, but I just didn't have another
day reserved for yangshuo) and that he talked and talked. His name
was paul and he is a physician in Silver City, NM (a place we mtn
biked and hiked to native american ruins mom and bro), but actually
immigrated over from the czech republic about 20 years ago. In the
end it was ok biking with him, which I was relieved, bc it could have
made it into a long day.
So we set off biking about 8kms to the Yulong River, a smaller river
than the Li River, but just as beautiful with the karst mountains
surrounding it. Once we got to the river we took small singletrack
trails along the river and through tiny little villages and through
rice paddies for 10km to get to the yulong bridge (dragon bridge), and
cool old style chinese arched bridge over the river. At the bridge,
Paul wanted to stay longer and take some photos and relax, so he said
he could find his way home without me (it was good he had me before bc
his sense of direction was not very good and it was definitely easy to
get lost (as we did on a couple occassions anyways). He bought me a
beer as thanks, and then I headed back on the 10 km's to the main road
going on a different track, thus making a really sweet 20km
singletrack route through villages, rice fields, alongside the river,
and past wallowing water buffalo. The singletrack was sweet...nice
and smooth in areas and bumpy in others. My single speed cruiser bike
handled it like a beast. But you could really rock around the tight
corners of the villages and raised embankments of the rice fields,
which made it a lot of fun.
Once back at the road, I biked another 5 km to a place called moon
hill where I parked my bike and walked for an hour (and extremely
sweaty hour...it was incredibly hot today with some strong sun, though
still not blue skies bc of the humidity) to the base of this huge arch
high up on a karst mountain. It could have been in arches np if it
were sandstone instead of limestone. The arch itself was cool, but I
continued on up a hidden sidetrail to the top of the peak. As soon as
I had wiped the stinging sweat out of my eyes, I was treated with an
unbelievabe jaw dropping sight. 360 degree view around the yangshuo
area with it's layers and layers of karst mountains and flat
shimmering rice fields. It was truly, truly amazing. I stayed up
there, sweating in the sun for about an hour bc the view was just so
amazing.
After I got back down, I biked the 12kms or so back to yangshuo, where
I explored some areas on bike around the Li River as the sun was still
nice and bright on the mountains. I also, of course, bc I was so hot
and dehydrated, treated myself to a couple mango shakes and ice
creams.
Back at the hostel I took a most wonderfully refreshing shower (Lauren
had said the best showers are after physical activity and then
drinking a beer while showering, though I did not do this, but just
the cold water rinsing the layers of salt off me was so nice), and
then went to the rooftop balcony of my hostel with the sweet view to
watch the sunrise. Of course that night was fried noodles and another
type of noodles and a couple movies (youth in revolt and Up). Leon
and some others went out to party at monkey janes, but I stayed back
at the hostel to relax with a whole horde of aussies and kiwis.
9/8 Lauren and I woke up fairly early (she was part of the aussie
crowd watching movies too) and waited a while for Leon and Cam and the
other 2 guys in our dorm room to wake up as we had all planned to go
bamboo rafting. When it became apparent that they were not getting
out of bed anytime soon and would likely have hangovers (something
that proved true when we came back and heard about their days), we
decided to go off to do the bamboo rafting on our own. We rafted from
Yangdi to Xingping (the same way we had hiked before), but this was
much more relaxing and cooler with a constant breeze and just diving
into the river whenever you wanted. Of course the scenery was
stunning. We stopped at the place where the picture on the back of
the 20 yuan note was drawn from. At lunch we had the cutest and
funniest old grannies come up to try and sell us fruits and random
handicrafts. We had a good time laughing with them. We really loved
them and Lauren even ended up buying some too small handmade sandels
from them. But it was quite a nice and refreshing and relaxing day
after the previous very active, very sweaty, and very hot days.
tonight I am going for a 5 dollar hour long chinese massage and then
back to the hostel for my last clay pot meal and movie night.
Tomorrow I leave for Longji to stay in some traditional minority
villages on the rice terraces for a couple nights.
I really love it here. It's so gorgeous, there are so many activities
to do, the food is amazing and cheap, the hostel is awesome, I have
made good friends bc of the hostel. Just amazing. This is the type
of place you could stay at for a long time. And you could easily live
here on 10 bucks per day and live well: $3.5 for the aircon dorm with
the free water and free laundry and free internet, 50 cents for an
asian breakfast (1 buck for western), 1 buck for lunch, 1 buck for a
bicycle rental for the whole day, and splurging so that you are
stuffed at 2 dollars for a huge 2 course meal puts you at 8 bucks,
which leaves you room for 2 60 cent large beers and a 25 sent icecream
with room to spare. Amazing!
On another, small world note. One gal that was leaving today from the
hostel was from the US and visiting her friend who is working for the
peace corp in mongolia (though they are taking a vacation down to
here). Anyways, she said she was a law student and I asked her which
one. She was funny bc she said "Yale...it's a school on the east
coast" Duh! I think she was trying to be modest. Anyways she of
course knew who chris sherman, MC, and Ashley Lott were, though she
said she doubted they knew her as they were the cool 3L's when she was
a 1L. But Catherine Barnard was her mentor.
It will be sad to leave this gorgeous and fun place, but I am also
excited to see some more places. Like I sad, two nights in longji
(dragon's backbone rice terraces) where I likely won't have internet
as they are just small minority villages and then catching the 18 hour
train from Guilin to Kunming in Yunnan on the 11th.
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