The Prettiest City in China

Despite the fact that we are reaching the point of being sick of so much travel, I planned a long weekend in Yangshuo. I never heard of it before we moved to China but Danny had always wanted to go to the area.  Visiting Yangshuo is a very different experience from most of our travels in Asia so far. Mostly in other cities we run around frantically trying to see as many important landmarks as possible. Guilin and Yangshuo are pretty much known for having pretty karst mountains and outdoor activities.

We went bike riding,hiking, rafting, fed buffalo, took a cruise and most importantly took in the beautiful scenery. We only had three days there but I think we would have both been happier if we could stay a week. Danny really didn’t want to go home.

 We flew into Guilin, the closest airport to Yangshuo, really late Thursday night. We were a bit worried about finding a taxi at midnight and did end up waiting a while. I was really surprised almost all the taxi drivers pulling up to the taxi line were women. Our driver told Danny there was a taxi strike in the city because they wanted to crack down on illegal taxis and raise rates. I’m kind of surprised because taxis in Guilin are really expensive compared to most places in China. Our driver was not officially a taxi driver, she was driving her husband’s cab. I’m not sure how her driving instead of her husband made a difference in the strike but there were fewer cabs available in general.


We stayed in a cute little hostel in Guilin called Wada. I’m ok with hostels as long as they have private rooms. The biggest advantage is it seems like hostels in China are more likely to have western foods than the hotels we normally stay in. In the morning we took a half day tour of the Li River that left us off in Yangshuo. We set it up in advance which is a little more expensive than just booking it once we arrive but it does mean you can avoid worrying about what to do the first day and we were able to find a tour mostly in English. We took a bus for about and hour and a half to the river. Our guide was ok, he pushed really hard to sell other tours as he told us about the area. We hadn’t figured out our plans for the rest of the day and it was really cheap (about $30 for both of us) so we signed up for a second tour in the afternoon where you go rafting. For the morning, we took a little motorboat along the river. The Li River has some of the loveliest views of the karst mountains – limestone mountains that are carved away by water over the years. Our driver pointed out all the important sights, although he didn’t speak English so Danny had to translate for me. Most of the sights are just specific mountains, rocks, or trees that the locals decided resemble something in nature like a type of fish, or a frog.

 

 




















 
We got lunch at a little noodle shop that was actually pretty decent and cost less than a dollar.  We chatted with our fellow tourists. This was our first tour where most of them were actually foreigners who spoke English. They were friendly and I was really happy to be on a tour with people I could communicate with. We sat with a German couple who had just finished a graduate studies program in China.



After lunch our guide gave us a really brief tour of the area. He pointed out one of the “yellow mud huts” which were hastily built in mass in the time of Mao Zedong when Mao told people to have as many kids as possible to increase the population. Funny that his successors instituted the one child policy…

The guide told us a bit about the houses. Above each doorway two round beams of wood stick out. The larger the wooden beams, the wealthier the family. The guide explained there is a saying, which Danny was vaguely familiar with, "Mén dāng hù duì". In English it means something like, “The doorway matches families’ social status.” So if your family has a very large beam above the door and your neighbor has a very small post you should not let your children get married, you should match your child to someone with an equal sized door post, or if you are really ambitious a larger door post. There also are red scrolls on each side of the door because red scares away the “nian” monster that comes every year.

As we walked down to the river, we checked out the view from an old fashioned bridge that is featured in a few Chinese movies. As we were taking pictures on the bridge a guy walked by leading a buffalo.


 

We each got to recline in a two person bamboo raft. I decided I liked our driver immediately because he had a cool bamboo hat. Instead of rowing the drivers used a long bamboo stick to push us along the river. It was really lovely scenery. Unfortunately it was raining a bit but the raft had a big umbrella and we wore ponchos. The driver pointed out more oddly shaped mountains that resembled animals, and couples taking wedding photos. We made three stops along the way.

The first was to watch cormant fishing, fishing with a cormant birds that are trained to catch fish then spit them out and give them to the fisherman. We actually had seen it before when we visited Xitang. It was still sort of cool, although in Xitang we were the only ones watching and the boat came much closer up to us.

Next, we stopped to feed some buffalo. Danny made fun of me for being scared of buffalo, really I just didn’t want to get that close to them because other people got their hands licked while feeding them and I thought that was sort of yucky.


The last stop was a small man made rapid that we went over.

From there we took the bus to Yangshuo. We both regretted slightly that we didn’t choose the route that let us out in Xing Ping, another little town just past Yangshuo. The tour gave options of going there, Yangshuo or heading back to Guilin.

     






























 
The bus left us off in the center of Yangshuo. It is a beautiful little town surrounded by karst mountains. There are two main streets filled with restaurants, and knick knacks for tourists to purchase. We looked around briefly and Danny had a snack from a food cart run by a woman wearing traditional Chinese attire including an incredibly ornate silver hat.

 


We decided to stay a bit farther out in the countryside rather than smack in the middle of town since the point of the trip was to enjoy nature and the scenery. Our hotel was a ten minute, 30 RMb ($6) taxi ride from town. We stayed at a place called the Giggling Tree which is managed by a Dutch couple. I’d read about the place online and it had excellent reviews. It is really cute, although a bit smaller than I’d pictured it based on the photos from the website. It feels like a quaint little bed and breakfast. It has a restaurant with decent western foods. Our room had a beautiful view of the mountains. We decided to splurge and get the large room because the price difference was only about $5. Our bed had a mosquito net which is really novel for me, having never slept under one.

 

The next day we rented bikes from the hotel and bought passes to visit a cave. It took us about an hour and a half to bike to the ticket office of the cave.  It is a really pretty ride through the country side past karst mountains. If we had more time we should have taken the more rugged back roads but we took the most direct route to Moon Water Cave, except the half hour we lost going the wrong direction. On the way we passed a few other sights including a rock climbing area that we would have liked to spend an extra day to visiting. There are a few caves with mud baths and hot springs in the area. I’m not sure if the one we picked was the best of them, but we enjoyed it.

From the ticket booth they drove us to the entrance. Somehow we managed to completely forget bathing suits but they sold them for pretty cheap at the cave’s entrance. They were really ugly and mine didn’t fit me properly. The area outside the entrance to the cave was really stinky. They recommended we didn’t bring a camera in which we were stupid enough to abide by. They really just wanted to sell us photos.

The cave was really cool. We took a boat in through a narrow pathway. After a few minutes we stopped and got out and began to walk. We hiked along the inside of the cave for about half an hour. Parts of the cave’s interior were low and narrow, at points we even had to crawl. Danny kept bumping his head and we both were glad they gave us construction hats to protect ourselves. After a bit of exploring we tried out the mud bath. It presumably is supposed to be good for your skin but I didn’t notice any difference. They had a naturally made water slide though. It was pretty fun. Afterwards we soaked in the hot springs. I’ve never been to one before. It was relaxing, just like a Jacuzzi but without the bubbles, and of course it was carved away naturally inside a limestone cave. I read online it may be artificially heated. I’m not sure if it was but we enjoyed it. Afterwards we got suckered into buying photos since we didn’t bring our camera in.

Afterwards we road our bikes a short ways to Moon Hill.We grabbed lunch at a little restaurant at its base with a lovely view and unimpressive food. Moon Hill is shaped like a pyramid with a funny little half-moon shaped hole through the center. It was a relatively easy hour long hike to the top. We were feasted on by mosquitos as we climbed but the view was worth it. Yangshuo is lovely. Afterwards we stopped at a little ice cream stand that seemed to be part of a farm that grew passion fruit. Danny got the home made passion fruit ice cream. It was pretty decent, but had too many seeds for my taste.


     

  



















 


The bike ride back was really tiring. Since neither of us is a very good biker, we were both really tired and our legs were rather shaky by the end. I’ve decided one of my main goals in life is to not get so lame and out of shape that I decide I’m too old for this sort of stuff within the next 30 years.

We had dinner at our hotel again, which has a rather large assorted menu. I’m always happy if I can find pizza while traveling in China. They do manage to find some rather unique ways to mess it up though. This one did not come with corn or melon on top though so I was pretty happy. 




For our last day we decided to spend half a day in Guilin since we were a bit curious to see it. In the morning we went into the town center of Yangshuo and spent a bit more time shopping. We got shaved ice, which was surprisingly good, but not quite as good as the place in Taipei which is supposed to have the best shave ice in the world. I decided I really wanted to buy a bamboo hat to hang on our wall as decoration so I looked around the stalls until I found some really cool ones. It ended badly, one of our hats seemed to have been infested by little bugs Google identified as Powder Post Beetles. They kept eating our hats and leaving bamboo dust underneath it. After dragging those giant hats all around Yangshuo and Guilin we ended up having to throw them both away a few days later. I’m sad I don’t have cool hats, otherwise known as Kong Fu Panda hats.















From Yangshuo we caught a bus to Guilin. It definitely is not worth spending time in Guilin, we should have stayed in Yangshuo. As soon a we got off the bus this guy in a vehicle similar to a golf cart offered to drive us for only five RMB, less than a dollar. We decided we’d  try it.

We had him drive us to the art museum which we had read about on wikitravel. I didn’t have high expectations but I love art and it is free so we thought we'd go anyway.

It only took about five minutes for our golf cart to navigate its way through the busy streets and stop out front a pretty, newly built but traditionally designed building. Inside the whole first floor was completely empty. The woman at the front told us the display was on the second floor.

I felt really nervous walking through the entirely empty “art museum.” Upstairs we were led through a large empty room into a side room where the lights were flicked on to reveal an unimpressive looking gallery selling numerous Chinese ink paintings. We looked around for about two minutes before heading back out. Wikitravel could have had the courtesy to label it properly, oh well.

Outside our golf car driver was waiting eagerly. They also were selling sightseeing cruises, although Danny didn’t love the idea. I think we were both feeling pretty skived out by our driver stalking us and the empty museum. Even though no harm really came to us, I just got the feeling people were trying to screw us out of our money. In part to get away from our driver/stalker I ended up deciding we should take the cruise. I think he got a cut of the fee we paid for the cruise but I’m not sure how it worked. No way he would have hung around all that time to get 5 RMB a ride. Danny thought the cruise was overpriced and not worth it but he went along with it because I was supposed to be in charge of planning this trip. I thought that just meant I was in charge of the flight and hotels, I put a lot of effort into picking cute hotels… I didn’t have a set plan of what to do in Guilin… oh well.

The cruise was actually ok. We were the only foreigners on the boat and all the locals in China seem to smoke but that was about the worst of it. We saw all the main sights of Guilin, more karst mountains named after animals. It was nowhere near as pretty as the views in Yangshuo. There were too many ugly buildings blocking the way. I dragged my giant, stupid hats along with me the whole time. It would have been worth it if it weren’t for those stupid beetles. They make such cool wall hangings.






















Half an hour later we got off the boat in a different location down the river to find our driver/stalker waiting for us. Awesome. We decided to check out seven stars park,recommended to us by our waiter from Giggling Tree. He was a friendly guy, a new waiter; he was somewhat uncertain of how to talk to foreigners, although his English was decent. Seven Stars Park wasn’t especially impressive but I don’t think you’ll find many better places to see in Guilin. It is pretty much their version of New York’s central Park. You have to pay a fairly high admission fee though. Inside there are a few points of interest including a temple, a few waterfalls, a zoo (which costs extra), and a view of a camel shaped mountain. There really isn’t much excitement. I could see the appeal if you live in Guilin but it isn’t particularly worth the trip for tourists. There weren't really any laowai (foreigners) there.






















We got a snack at a pub on the pedestrian street. While we waited for our food this random guy came over and sat down at our table. I pretty much always assume that means he wants money. He started by congratulating Danny on having a foreign girlfriend. Whatever… Next he began telling us he was an art teacher, which is funny because I actually am an art teacher,but I didn’t bother to tell him that. In his case, I’m pretty sure it was just a scam where he tries to high pressure sell us art after we agree to go see his nearby gallery. He said he was going to be teaching art at UCLA through a teacher exchange program. His story really fell apart for me when I asked him what type of art he taught and he said just art. He knew nothing about art. Ah well, it was amusing.