One of the places
that I most wanted to visit in China was the karst country in the
south, with its distinctive vegetation-cloaked limestone hills.
Guilin is on the edge of the karst area, so it has a few hills dotted
around the city, but our destination for today, Yangshuo, is right in
its heart.
In the morning, we
repacked our bags so that we could leave Kate's and Sarah's backpacks
at the hostel as we'll be returning here in about a week's time. We
have quite a bit of walking ahead of us, so it will be a treat not to
have to carry all of our stuff with us. After a breakfast of
pancakes, eggs and tea downstairs, we killed the time before our tour
bus arrived noisily playing table football.
At around 10am,
someone from the hostel took us out to the main road to wait for the
bus, which duly arrived about half an hour later. There was a
decent-sized contingent of Chinese tourists already on the bus, along
with a young female tour guide. We stopped a few more times to pick
up more tourists and then we were on our way to the Li River. Along
the way, our guide kept up a monotone monologue describing the local
area and explaining a bit about the tour, first at great length in
Chinese and then, mercifully, more briefly in English. She talked
more rapidly than I would have thought feasible, stopping only very
briefly to take a gasping breath to fuel her onward progress. We
couldn't help laughing when she started off by telling us that
'Guilin is very small – tiny – only about five million people'
without a trace of irony.
Earbuds in, music
on, monologue muffled, I stared out of the window at the evolving
scenery, which began to feature an increasing number of karst hills
until the landscape on both sides was completely dominated by hills
of all shapes and sizes. Eventually the road began to descend into a
valley and we son arrived at the car park at the river 'port'. We got
off the bus and were instantly surrounded by a group of elderly women
trying to sell us trinkets, big water guns and crowns made of fresh
flowers. Two of the Chinese tourists bought two of the crowns and
presented them to the girls.
We had 20 minutes to
kill before our boats were due to leave, so we found a patch of shade
and piled our bags up. I had a bit of a look around to see if I could
find something for us to eat, but the options were pretty limited. I
found a place that did two versions of the same dish – flat or thin
rice noodles (something of a local speciality) quickly cooked in
boiling water in a little basket then drained, a dash of sauce, a
dash of oil, some slices of pork and some peanuts and a few other
condiments. Bafflingly, the others didn't want to try it and I
greatly enjoyed slurping the whole lot down. We then joined the queue
and then climbed aboard our 'bamboo boat – which was actually
constructed from PVC pipes. Four people to a boat, covered, driver,
motor – simple but effective.
The trip down the
river took about an hour and a half and took us through some
breathtaking countryside. Limestone hills towered over us on either
side of the river. In places they had been worn down on one side to
create impressive sheer cliffs that rose from the water's edge. The
river was pretty busy, with large numbers of bamboo boats heading
down river around us as we sat eating lychees and oohing and aahing
at the scenery.
When we reached the
end of the ride, we climbed aboard a little buggy that would take us
to the nearby by town, where a bus was waiting to take us on to
Yangshuo. But not before we had to stopped off at the spot where you
can see the view of the river that appears on the 20 yuan note. The
buggy dropped us a the edge of town, but it was then a long walk to
the bus (past the area where they repair the bamboo boats), in some pretty hot and steamy conditions, so we were very
relieved when we climbed aboard into the air conditioned interior.
While we waited for the other tourists to return, the tour guide
quietly asked if I could accompany her off the bus. When we were back
out in the steamy outside, she started to give me the hard sell on an
optional added tour that she had already given us the soft sell on a
few times in the bus. She asked how much we would be willing to pay
and I countered by asking how much she was willing to charge. At 100
yuan each her opening gambit wasn't terribly attractive and even when
she dropped it to 80 yuan I declined, much to her obvious
disappointment. All the while, it was difficult to concentrate on her
pitch as the already thick, hot air was being made even more
unpleasant by an overpowering odour of stale urine emanating from I
know not where. Even after I explained our dire financial position
and said no to her offer a number of time, she asked me to talk it
over with Kate, but to be discreet as possible as she didn't want the
other passengers to know what an excellent deal we had been offered.
When we finally made
it to Yangshuo, the bus dropped us at a petrol station, where we
hired a guy with a tiny little truck (a bit like a motorbike tractor
with a little cabin with bench seats at the back) to take us to the
hotel. He seemed a bit unsure about the hotel, but we headed off,
driving a relatively short distance out of the centre of town and
turning off the road near a huge limestone hill. A bit further up the
road, he stopped and pointed to a freshly painted hotel that didn't
have a name on it in English. Our hearts sank as we assumed that he
had taken us for both a literal and a metaphorical ride, but then I
checked the phone number on the front of the building against the
number on my print-out and they matched – this was obviously the
right place.
And so it was. The
woman on reception was very friendly and helpful – and spoke
English – and before long we were checking out the room, which was
bright and clean. It did, however, have a squat toilet and beds that
felt as though they had just put a sheet over a box spring.
We walked into town
with a light rain falling on us, marvelling at the towering limestone
bluffs all around us. As we hadn't really had a proper lunch, we
stopped at the first restaurant we found – a very local place where
you could make up a plate of food from a collection of slightly
scary-looking dishes in a buffet out the front – and then help
yourself to steamed rice. We made up a plate, grabbed some rice and
some beers and ate at a table on the pavement.
As we ate, we
spotted a guy selling Chinese-style barbecue chickens from a cart
across the road, so we went across and bought one, then grabbed some
more food from the buffet to takeaway, along with some beers and then
took it all back to the hotel, where we had dinner at a wooden table
outside the front.
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