Everyone, meet Yangshuo. Yangshuo, meet everyone.
i think that every person should make it around to this place at one point in their life or another. i came to yangshuo last year when i lived in china, and it was JUST as great the second time around. the magnicficent scenery, chill atmosphere, and wonderful people make this one of the best places on earth, well at least to me.
let me start from the beginning....
we left nanlang headed for shiqi around 4:30 p.m. to catch our bus that left around 6:30. the bus to shiqi usually takes about an hour. we made it to the bus stop with about a half hour til our sleeper bus was to take off. there is a mcdonalds right next to the bus stop so.... you guessed it! we got some mcdonalds.
around 6:20 p.m. we load onto our sleeper bus, and settle into our "home" for the next 12 hours. sleeper buses are so awesome...! i love them. and hate them. at the same time? the beds are so small! i just barelyyy fit onto one of the beds. good thing i like to sleep in a ball anyways. this sleeper bus was pretty good. it wasn't super dirty or anything. they give you pillows and blankets, but who knows if they wash them... i brought my own pillow case haha. the pillows grossed me out.
alright so we were told our bus ride would be 10 hours. that would put us in yangshuo around 4 a.m. little did we know our bus was a come one come all! they stopped all along the way picking up stragglers and letting them sit in the aisles. i felt pretty bad for those people. some didn't get to lay down all the way. buuuut they didn't pay close to as much as us, so it is what it is!
me and mandy had two beds on the bottom. bridgett and april had two beds on the top. mandy and i thought the bottom would be WAY better because on the top you feel like you are going to fall off every second haha. although this was true, we didn't know that stragglers would be joining us on our bus ride! so there was this lady and her daughter that were sitting right in between mandy and i. first of all, she talked SOOOOO loud. too loud... i gave her the stank eye like a ba jillion times and she never got the hint. pff. secondly, she asked for my pillow... i ended up just giving it to her because i felt bad. and because it was super gross anyways.
the bus ride took about 12 hours from all the stopping and picking up people, and we arrived in yangshuo around 6:30 a.m. i didn't know where we were supposed to get off, but the driver just shoo'ed us off the bus at a random stop so we got off! we took a little taxi bike to our hostel and settled in.
{entrance to the hostel. bar area}
{they let us paint on the walls! i left my mark :)}
{view from the rooftop of hostel}
we met up with another ILP group that teaches in a different part of zhongshan. there are 7 in their group. they stayed at the same hostel as us!it was so fun to travel with them. the hostel we stayed at was suuuper cute. the owner and workers were our best friends. they were fun to talk to, and they were just very hospitable in general. my only complain was that we paid 10 yuan for a towel to shower with, and the towel was the size of a dish rag... hahahah. that was fun trying to dry off with that.
everyone was pretty spent from the long bus ride, so we rested up a bit before heading out into town.
DAY 1. LEARNING THE ROPES.
We spent our first day there getting a layout of the town and shopping! There is one longgg street that has all the shopping you would ever need! Lots of souvenir stuff, clothes, trinkets, errrythang. You could spend hourrrs walking up and down that street. which we did... haha.
Later that day we decided to go on a bamboo raft ride! I had done this last year and lovvved it, so i was super excited to go again.
here enters ester.
alright everyone, this is ester. one of the greatest people you could ever meet. her job is to find people who want to do bamboo raft tours, bike tours, scooter tours, etc. she just roams the street and looks for people who wanna party! we found her, and fell in love with her pretty quick. she helped us out to get a great deal on a bamboo raft.
here are some pictures from the ride..... this place is breathtaking.
after our bamboo raft ride we went back to the hostel and showered up to go out to dinner! we went to a wonderful place called Ryley's. I went last year and have been dreaming of it ever since i got to china... i don't know why but it just hits the spot everrrrytime. it is mostly western food. i got their pizza, brushetta, and apple crumble.. mmmm it's just so dang good!
after we stuffed our faces what did we do? we went dancing of course!!! chinese people love their dancing. we went to a random place on west street and danced the night away!! it was so crazyyy. the people are just non stop dancing to sweet techno! we joined the party and the dj announced our arrival to the whole joint hahaha. we had such a fun time.
{this guy was a little too overzealous..}
DAY 2. EPIC ADVENTURES.
my favorite day by far. we signed up with ester(see above) for a bike tour around the country side and also to the mud/water cave, and moonhill. she is such a champ. she is 50, and she still takes people on LONG bikerides allll weeek. i was so impressed with her.
we woke up and met ester around 9. hopped on our sweet bikes,with baskets, and headed off into the country! it was so beautiful. i could try to describe the beauty... but i think pictures will just have to do that for me :)
we arrived at the mud/water cave and stripped down to our swimsuits ready to get dirrrrty! it is a natural mud cave with natural hot springs after. it is about a 30 minute walk through the cave to get to both of these places. so the cave was full of stalactites and stalagmites. it was gorrrgeous. what made it funny was our tour lady would stop at all these different rocks and tell us what they looked like. "look it is a dolphin." "look, there, it is a butterfly." "up there, it is buddha" etc. hahah it was just so random... i loved it.
we finally got to the mud section and got right in!!!!! there were a couple men that were in there before us, i think they were french. they were OBNOXIOUS! kept splashing us and stuff... we did not like them....haha. anyywaayyys, there were little slides carved into the mud, it was fun! the water is soooooo dense from the mud that you float even though it is like a foot deep. we took some great pictures:)
we went on through the cave after that to the hot springs and got to just relaaax... i miss taking baths! it was nice to get as close to taking a bath as possible? ya? oh p.s. my swimsuit bottoms that were once pitch white, are not tan. forever.... sick.
{ more pictures coming sooon! morgin has them}
when we finished i went outside to wait with ester while all the other girls waited for pictures to be printed that they got. i got talking with ester and she started telling me about her life... her struggles. Her husband won't work. He drinks and plays cards every day and no matter what ester does, he won't leave her home. She also told me that he hurts her.. didn't tell me specifically how obviously, but she motioned hitting and it broke my heart. She works so hard every single day, and comes home to a man who doesn't deserve her. she takes care of her two daughters by herself. supports them herself. She is so happy and always smiling and she works SO HARD. It touched my heart... i talked to the girls and we decided that we would give ester whatever money amount we felt comfortable after the bike ride. i just knew it would help her our so much more than it would ever help me...
soooo after the caves we got a quick lunch at a cafe down the road, then headed off to hike moon hill!!! man, we were already so tired, but we didn't give up! one of the girls counted and it was around 850 steps up this hill. STEEP steps. me and mandy were towards the end of the group... and i am not sure but we had the giggles SO BAD. hahahaha. we kept laughing and it made hiking up this thing so much harder!! but so much more fun!!! hahahah. oh man. just remembering makes me laugh.
we made it to the top and it was gorgeous!! take a peeeek.
the way down wasn't much easier.. but i finally made it down. by this time my legs were shaking uncontrollably.. i knew it was time to go home! haha. we headed on the countryside and were about 10 min into the ride when someone told us one of the girls wasn't behind us. she was lost! buuuh. that is never fun. we spent around 2 hours looking for here until we were finally reconnected with her. that was scary, but she was safe and sound. just couldn't keep up with the group i guess.
for dinner that night we had... mcdonalds. we are horrible. we really need to be restrained by someone.
we went dancing one more time that night! it was great!! the owner of the hostel decided to come with us!! he was so fun. and soo sweet. always gave us free drinks or treats.i appreciated him so much. we got free cokes at this place because they wanted us there so bad. they just love us foreign white girls! and i'm totally okay with that.
DAY 3. MOTOR BIKES.
easily my favorite part of the vacation, driving the motor bikes. i have never driven a motor bike before but i have always wanted to! it was only 30 yuan for the whole day.. about 5 dollars? um yes. please and thank you! we had 2 people to a scooter and we literally spent the whole day just exploring china.. we had no idea where we were going. no destination in mind. just driving wherever looked interesting! me and mandy shared a scooter and we just went.. had no idea where. we found so many little villages and beautiful scenery. it was peaceful and pretty much just pure bliss. it was the perfect way to end our vacation...
we parted ways with the other group and finally left yangshuo around 8 p.m. this sleeper bus was a tiny bit smaller than the last one, but there weren't people in the aisles... we liked that better. me and mandy took the beds in the very back on the bottom. my bed had an extra bad on it, so we put it in the aisle between us to make a master mega bed!!!!! it was epic.. and perfect.
we got into zhongshan around 430 a.m... and the buses weren't running yet. we set up shop in mcdonalds until 5 because that's when we thought the buses would start. (yes we had mcdonalds for breakfast...) the buses didn't start for a bit, so we ended up just taking a taxi home. the guy kept trying and trying and trying to speak chinese to me even though he knew i didn't know anything!!!! hahah. i felt so bad.
now we are home and safe :) we head off for our next vacation in 3 weeks!!!!
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