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Other entries in Guilin

Wow, tiny town, I can see the countryside

The plane flight into Guilin was fairly uneventful. It was as difficult to find the backpackers as ever, they don't seem to advertise their hostels at all in China so finding them is abit hit and miss. I spent the next day walking around Guilin, getting lost for 4hrs as I seemd to have walked off the map and took most of the afternoon to find where I was again, I could have taken a taxi, but that would have been cheating. The next morning I eventually managed to send a parcel back home after some pictionary, limited English from the Post Office staff and the instructions in Chinese characters that I had the hostel write out for me, lets see in 2months if they actually arrive back home.

After that I managed to find a bus to Yangshou at a resonbile price, it started at at 80Yuan on the far side of the road and by the time I got to the bus it was 15, good bartering I think. The ride there was good driving through hundreds of paddi feilds and feilds of water buffalo. When I arrived at Yangshou the second confrontation happend.

It seems as though most of the Chinese were out to rip you off or con you.

I was met off the bus by a guy in a suite that spoke very good English, he said that he was from the hostel that I was looking for, I thought that it sounded a bit strange so I quizzed him on some information like the street address and email address, he gave all the right answers so I went with him. The outside looked nothing like the picture that I had in my book, his reason was it was for the cars to get around the corner easier and the police had ordered it. The room he showed me was very nice and very cheap. When I asked to see where the cafe and shop was he said that they pulled a table out of a cupboard and that was it. I asked him to let me see the dorm rooms but he wouldn't. The more I quizzed him on the place and compared my map to the one that he had on the wall the more he tried to push the sale. I asked to see his YHA symbol and he showed me the one that he had painted on the outside of the building. Eventually he lost his cool, he was getting more wound up and angry the more I kept douting the hostel was real and calling me a baby he grabbed my fingure, bending it back almost to breaking point, before ripping the map out of my hands and telling me to politly (this is the censored version) to walk off down the street and find some where else to stay. I think I did very well not to knock him into the middle of next week. The next time I might not be so controlled, lets hope its a nice prizon that I end up in.

I asked the receptionist at a friendly hotel who pointed me in the right direction. The hostel was really nice, laid back and relaxed. I was feeling really ill at this point so went to sleep for the next 16 hours. There were some Izrealies staying in the same dorm room as me that I had met in Chengdu and the next evening while sitting in a bar I met up with Chrisitian from theYangtze trip, what a small world it is.

Yangshou is abit toursity, well very touristy, souvenir shops, cafes and resturant and bars on every street. But it was alot smaller than the other towns that I had been in. There are a few things that people come to see here. The Li River and the rock climbing, as well as other cultural stuff. I booked my self on to a rock climbing trip that was based just outside the town. The rocks here are really sharp on the fingures and has I hadn't climbed for a while, I was struggling. They are all bolted sports climbs and thankfully the guide was leading them all so I didn't have to, I did manage to top rope up to 6A+ which is faily good. Christian had mentioned that he wanted to go and see the Comarant night fishing so I joined him. They tie string around the  neck of the bird so that they can't swallow that catch and every so oftern the guy on the bamboo raft will catch them and empty the beaks of fish. They didn't catch much but it was worth going to watch.

It was time to head off as I had to catch my flight to Hanoi and so I boarded a sleeper bus and made my way to Hong Kong. The bus was brand new with three rows of bunks beds down the bus. I wouldn't call my self a big person, but my shoulders didn't fit in the bed, my left arm was in the middle of the passage way and I barley fitted in length ways. I dread to think how a taller person would cope with a 12 hr trip.

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