Journey's During National Holiday Break

Saturday, October 6th, 2007



Let me just start with…this entry is going to be very very long. This past week was National Week and I haven’t blogged in a week, so there’s lots to share! National Week is like July 4th to us, so it’s a big holiday where we don’t have class! YAY! So, for National Week there was a group of 4 of us that decided to travel together go to Guilin and Yangshuo. These places are known for their scenery and mountains.

We began our travels by flying to Guilin Friday afternoon, which was September 28th. I had to skip my first class in order to make it to the airport. Oh tsk tsk me on that. I don’t really like flying, so the flight wasn’t that enjoyable. Especially when we hit turbulence and our plane took such a drop that people fell our of their seats. Thank goodness I drugged myself. It made the ride a little better. When we arrived in Guilin that evening, we settled at our hostel which actually wasn’t that bad! It was actually my first hostel ever, so a good experience. After we got settled, we went out to the night market and met up with the other group that also went to Guilin, but they went on a tour. We also got to see this HUGE map that was actually on the ground.

Here I am standing on Fuzhou, which is where my parents are from.

fuzhou

Our first real day in Guilin, we spent about the whole day at the 7 Star Park. The park was HUGE! And there was so much to do. We climbed mountains, went into a cave, dressed up in traditional dress, saw monkeys, camels, and the best of all, PANDA’S!!!

This is inside the cave.

cave

(There’s more pictures I’d like to post, but the blog says that I’m up to my limit again…hopefully that’ll be fixed soon and I’ll put more pictures up, sorry! )That night we also saw a show on an outside stage of singers and dancers and acrobatics. It was very impressive to see how they could bend in all sorts of ways. There was also a hotel next to it that had a man made waterfall come off the hotel. It was about a 15 min show but well worth it. We also checked out some of the hostels in Guilin with out hostel roommates. The clubs there are…interesting. The Chinese like a lot of techno and their way of dancing is very…weird. If you’d like to learn some of their moves, ask me next time you see me. We shared our hostel with these 2 other girls that were actually also studying in Shanghai but at a different university. They were a little crazy for us but very humorous. One was from New Hampshire and the other from Oklahoma City. We also met a guy from Spain that was just traveling. He was a very interesting person and also learning about his travels.

The next day we spent in Guilin, we actually rented a taxi driver for the day for 50rmb. I liked her at first because she seemed very friendly, helpful, and less crazy than the other drivers we’ve met. And oh! If you ever go to Guilin, you can bargain the taxi fare! That was a good deal. We first went to the river for a bamboo rafting tour of 10 mountains on the Li River. It was very relaxing and peaceful. On the raft we also stopped at this rock island where we tried some of the fish from the river. It was pretty good. I like fish. We were brought upstream first and then floated downstream. It took about 80 min. I believe. I really enjoyed the bamboo rafting. Afterwards we went to Solitary Park, which is university within a park. There was a great deal of history at the park, involving Sun-yat Sen, concubines, trees, and characters. We climbed a mountain that had the largest written characters on it. It was also a difficult climb because the stairs were similar to the great wall, very big. After Solitary Peak, we tried to go to the Thousand Buddha Cave but that’s when our taxi lady went coo coo on us. We told her we wanted to go there but she kept trying to tell us that it was closed and we should go somewhere else. But we kept telling her to bring us there so she said we did. Until we got there and it wasn’t Thousand Buddha Cave. It was a different place that she thought she could pass us as Thousand Buddha Cave, but we knew better. She couldn’t fool us! So then we got back into the taxi and made her take us there. The Thousand Buddha Cave doesn’t seem to have a thousand Buddha’s unless it’s a hide and go seek game. There were only about 50 but it was still pretty neat to see them. We also got to sit on the stone seats and watch the Li River and people swimming in it as well. After that, we headed back to our hostel and got dinner as well. That night we met up with the 11 others that were on the tour group and went to KTV with them. The place where we went seemed kind of sketchy because at least half the building was abandoned. Good thing we traveled with a bunch of people.

On our last day in Guilin, we actually joined the tour group to go to Longji. Longji is known for their beautiful rice terraces. We got to spend about 2 hours there before to started heading back to Guilin to catch the bus to Yangshuo. We had a traditional meal in Longji, drinking wine with the locals. The rice wine tasted a bit…sweet. I’m not sure if I liked it or not, but a lot of people seemed to. It was an experience though. We were driven up part of the way of the mountain where we then got out and hiked up to the top. It was actually pretty fun to run up the stairs of the mountain, and a good workout! It was beautiful there, I wish I could post some pictures. Soon enough. We made it to the top and it was a breath taking moment to be at the top and see all the terraces. On our way up we also saw men who carried people up in those king like bamboo chairs. They seemed so old, yet they were so strong. Ladies were also carrying bamboo baskets on their backs, offering to carry bags and luggage up the mountains. I felt bad for them. To be so old and to still be working like that. They must be in great condition. After the terraces, we headed back to Guilin just in time to catch our 8pm bus ride to Yangshuo. It was about an hour and a half ride to Yangshuo on a bus that didn’t have air conditioning, or at least never turned it on, so it was very hot.

When we finally got into Yangshuo, we had great difficulty trying to find our hotel. We tried asking some locals, but they didn’t seem that nice because they wouldn’t stop to help us. We finally did find these 2 girls, who thought we were French, that help direct us in the wrong direction. They told us to go on this road which we ended up walking forever ending until we randomly found our hotel. If we walked on the road we were and just turned right, we would have gotten to our hotel in 5 min. Oh well. While we were walking around, we also saw other hostels/inns/hotels that had vacancy so we checked them out to see if they were cheaper than ours. We found some that were cheaper so we wanted to get them for the next days that we were going to be there, only the problem was that we had already made reservations as the hotel we were staying at. But there was another problem, there was 4 of us and the hotel only let 3 of us in, so we snuck the 4th one in. They obviously knew in the morning because they said something about it when we were trying to get out of staying there for the next few days. Of the complexity of it all. We finally did get out of it through a third party, thank goodness. For our first day there we basically just hung out and did some shopping and lots of bargaining. We met up with 2 other guys from Fudan that were also in Yangshuo. While we were in Yangshuo, we went rock climbing, kayaking, to the mud cave, biking, and a lot of hanging out. It was really relaxing. Rock climbing was quite adventurous. It was my first time climbing with all the gear and everything. I climbed 3 different routes. It was actually pretty fun. It was hard at times and frustrating when I wasn’t able to find the places to put my hands and feet. On the last route I was thinking about giving up because I couldn’t reach the rock I was suppose to pull myself up to but my friends and the rock climbing people kept encouraging me, which made me want to try even harder. It was a great feeling reaching the top point. I think the scariest part was coming down. When you come down, you’re basically in a sitting relaxed position and your trust is in the guy at the bottom of the mountain with the rope. I had trouble with that the first couple times, but I had more trust as I climbed more. I have a scar on my leg, but that’s where the stories come into place:)

The mud cave was…”beyond anything I’ve experienced before”, according to my friend Adrea and I couldn’t have put it in better words. The first thought we had when we thought mud cave was something like sounds like fun! We got a great deal bargaining for the tickets and bikes to get to the mud cave. It was about a half an hour bike ride to the cave from town. From there, we took a bus to the actual cave. To physically get into the cave we have to take a boat. It really did feel like a real cave. We had to duck our heads and crawl, it was quite exciting. We knew we were going to go into the mud so we didn’t bring any camera’s because we didn’t want to get them dirty, wish we had someone to take pictures for us though because every picture was 10 rmb. We got 3. Getting into the mud was…a weird feeling I suppose you could say. It was thick, almost like getting into a pool of pudding. Very thick. Trying to sit in the mud was actually hard. It was so thick, you would just float. It took a lot of pressure for us to push each other into the mud. The mud was also very heavy in my hair. It was a lot of fun though, just took a little to get use to it. We had some mud wrestling and mud fights. It was definitely an experience and if you’re ever in Yangshuo, I would definitely recommend going to the mud cave.

Kayaking down the Li River was very relaxing. We enjoyed the scenery and mountains as we floated down the river. The river was very calm. On our way to the kayaking place was a little shady though. I felt like I had been tricked and I was being led to the back of the town where people would be waiting to slaughter and eat us, but hey that’s China. Of course that isn’t really what happened or else I wouldn’t be here writing this right now. Kayaking was really nice though, I’d love to do it again. We got to see so much on the way down. We were also very close to water buffalo, to the point that you could probably get out of your kayak and sit on one, but that probably wouldn’t be safe. We also made some friends on our flow down. There were children that would shout, “Hello! What’s your name?” and that’s the extent of their English. I tried talking to them in mandarin but they didn’t understand that as well. They spoke a village dialect. But I got to take pictures of them and as we flowed down, they ran by our sides until they could no longer go. I imagined that kind of thing only happened in the movies, but it actually did and it was a great feeling.

About half way down the river we also stopped in a village to take a rest where we walked around the town. Walking through the village made me kind of sad to see people live in such poverty. It made me appreciate life more than I normally do. This kind of thing happens every time I come to China and go to the villages. I know poverty is there, it just reminds me of how grateful I am. My parents always remind me of how thankful I should be to be born in the United States and have the chances I have. Now that I think back, I do things that I regret doing, not thinking about others. I just needed to be reminded of it sometimes, and I shouldn’t have to be. What really frustrates and annoys me is those who do walk through the villages and see the poverty but don’t think about it at all. They still complain about what they have is enough and don’t think about what the others don’t. If you just had a little heart and looked at the children, the families and thought about what it would be to be in their place, you would enjoy life a little more and not complain about the small things. We went bike riding on our last day in Yangshuo before heading back to Shanghai. During the bike ride I stayed a little behind the group to fully sink in my thoughts and enjoy my life a little more. Even now, just think about what your life would be like without all the luxuries you have. Next time you think about complaining about being tired or wasting food, think about those that have less than you do and work a lot harder. Be greatful for what you have and a little more thoughtful.