Weather: 54F
Time: 12:25AM
I was “just along for the ride.” In short, this was a fantastic leg of the trip. A group of five total visited many beautiful outdoor locations and finally got to see the China countryside. I left America hoping to this China. Something so different that it felt like I was an alien. We went for a hike and only saw locals for the entire day. While the hike was the highlight, we also met some new friends and rode a boat on the Li River from Guilin to Yanghshuo.
Yangshuo
This town is not a very large place. It has a tourist area about the size of two large city blocks which serves at the home base for travelers going into the real countryside. It offers many amenities found in large cities but all of that is gone after five minutes on a bicycle. Surrounded by mountains that were naturally eroded, every street corner offers a unique view. This area of China seemed to be the least fake place I had been to yet.
Li River Cruise
The cost of the cruise was $55 / person. It costs more for foreigners to take the cruise because the cruise boats have to have a different license to carry foreign people. The boat was 100 to 120 feet long and 3 decks tall. Two dining decks and an observation deck. The cruise lasted about 3 hours and went past many famous cliffs and scenic picturesque areas. One of the more famous areas can be found on the back of the 20 yuan bill. It was a nice peaceful way to get from Guilin to Yangshuo and a unique way to see the Chinese countryside.
Small Village Tour
On our boat, we had heard from our tour guide there would be an opportunity that afternoon to see the four items listed above for what seemed like a good price considering travel was included. We registered and went to see these things for the afternoon. We later found out that all of these things were at the same location, but it was still an okay price.
The highlights from this trip were seeing how the village was built, the fantastic views, hanging out with some water buffalo and riding a bamboo raft. The village was made mostly from mud bricks and wood. Almost none of the buildings had glass windows but rather a large opening in the wall where windows should be. This is due to the fluxes in funding the farmers experience.
The bamboo rafts were interesting water going vehicles, the pictures will do a better job explaining this than I can. We floated out to see some water buffalo, that was pretty neat – but the experience was the fantastic scenery.
The last experience on this tour was watching the Chinese technique of Commodore fishing. The commodore is a duck with a long neck and apparently is quite good a fishing. The technique is to tie a rope around the duck's neck loose enough that it can breath but tight enough it can not swallow the fish it catches. While it is incredibly cruel, it is also highly effective. This duck can catch up to 50kg a day of fish. Any to make it less cruel, it was said they they give 1 of 7 fishes caught to the duck to keep it happy. I have some video of this – it is interesting if nothing else.
New Friends / Dinner
After the trip ended we bumped into some students that study in Beijing. The group was a very nice set of students who are studying from American University at the number one university in China. It was a real pleasure to meet these people and we ended hanging out with them a few more times the rest of the trip. We all enjoyed a dinner together and had a few drinks on the roof of our hostel.
Day Hike
The next morning, we had read about a nice hike in the countryside. We got on a local commuter bus and went an hour into the fields. When we got out we were at a river and on the other side of it started at 20 km hike. Unfortunately, the local bamboo boat owners knew that we had no other choice than to pay them to cross the river. They thought a fair price was 100 RMB and we had no room to negotiate. Considering the traveling distance and time it takes to cross the river, 15 RMB would more reasonable. This is a practice I will refer to as “getting bamboozled.” We paid and started our hike on the other side, knowing that the hike would cross the river two more times made us a bit unhappy. The hike from here on is fairly indescribable. We spent the rest of the afternoon, walking through farmer’s fields, climbing on rocks, and being surrounded by nothing western at all. Surprisingly, it was not upsetting to the farmers to have us wandering around on the land they farm. I wonder if this has anything to do with the farmers not actually owning the land, since the government owns it all.
We again got bamboozled on the next river crossing and sadly we had nothing we could do about that. We continued hiking and taking lots of pictures of anything that was interesting. I captured plenty of video of some of the small towns we visited, but it is very shaky since I was walking the whole time.
At one point during the hike there was a man sitting by a creek. The creek had no easy way to get across and he had a bamboo raft. His deal was 1 yuan per person as a toll to cross without getting wet. He even looked like a troll, so rather than trying my luck – I paid the $0.13. It was just odd that there was a man waiting all day for someone to pay him to cross this small creek.
We came across many other things during our walk. We climbed through fields to get to a water fall, visited an orange grove built on the hill, and encountered water buffalo on the trip. Our trip concluded with a bamboo raft to our destination city. We completed around half the hike because we spent so much time off trail looking at things. We got a raft at the end of the day for forty yuan, this raft ride lasted nearly twenty minutes. As we had read, the man would not drop us off in the actual city – instead he chose to drop us off right by his friend’s motorcycle-bus. I cannot describe this better than the pictures, so be sure to look at those. Twenty more yuan to get to town and it was still much cheaper than both of the previous river crossings. It was a great trip and really a unique China experience.
Moon Hill
Sunday morning we rented some bicycles and rode out into the country to find a famous rock, reminiscent of Arches National Park in Utah – just only one arch. We rode for thirty minutes and found the entrance but due to time constraints could not go in and hike up it. We tried to view it from the ground, but it was very cloudy and difficult to get a good picture.
Traveling to Shanghai
We hired a private car from Yangshuo to Guilin Airport, a nice leather interior van. Arrived a bit early so did some studying for my exam the next day and then flew home. Thankfully, we were able to find a cab driver that was willing to take 5 passengers in his cab from Shanghai’s Pudong to school. It saved quite a bit of money by doing this.. despite being super uncomfortable.
Biber
No comments:
Post a Comment