Adventure down the Li River

For our week long break, we ventured into rural China, our first stop, Guilin, known according to the Chinese saying “桂林山水甲天下”  to have the world's best mountains and water. The city is home to strange caves and rock formations, hillside rice paddy, and Li River, where the inspiration of the 20 RMB bills came from. It is also very representative of Chinese traditional scenery painting.

We arrived in the city a little before noon after some air traffic delays from Shanghai. My first impression was "uh oh"... 

I had taken living in the city for granted so much and forgot that now I'll be in a less metro area where transportation is not very convenient! Even worse, I was too cocky since I knew I could speak Chinese so the only things I had planned ahead was a plane ticket leaving and a train ticket back to Shanghai, the only other things I had were some Google Map screenshots of where I would like to go and some pre-trip readings.

Our 1st leg. It felt like the amazing race...

So what did I learn? a couple of things:
-3G actually worked everywhere we went! if it wasn't for this we might still be somewhere in the mountains.
-Knowing Chinese only prevents you from being lost but doesn't help you get to places. As soon as we ventured out of the cities, people usually just spoke in dialect and it became harder and harder to negotiate for transportation.
-If anyone overly friendly approaches you, they are always up to something, as you will soon see.

Anyways, after a couple hours of back and forth, we found the bus stop to Yangdi, from there, we were going to find ways of cruising down the river and arrive at Yanghuo to end the day.

However, as we were getting on the bus, one lady approached us and asked us to travel with her since she was going home to Yangdi as well, and it would be cheaper to get a van, we also soon found out that she also found another boy, who claimed he was "going south to look for work" but just looked too young, but since he was going to the same places as we were, we went with it and all hopped on the van.

soon, we will all be used to riding in shady vans and no more photos will be needed

on arrival, all in one piece

But then comes the tricky part of the deal, once we arrived at Yangdi, we had to find a raft that will take us to Yangshuo, and no body would take us! The lady then "kindly" told me, the local authority "collectively" sells tickets and we will have to give money to her so she can buy it for us at a lower rate....

Well shit.

This is when 3G came in handy, we looked up the prices according to wikitravel, and yeah we got ripped off and the tickets we got had its value side removed....

but hey, we were in the middle of no where and everyone was working together so it had to be done, the other kid that was traveling with us didnt want to pay the higher price so he ended up going half way with us on the raft and was dropped off and "would walk the rest of the way"

this little guy, best of luck to him...

After this episode though, everything went alright, and we finally got to enjoy the view of the Li River as we cruised down the river on a raft. The driver or the captain guy for the raft even moonlight as a tour guide and pointed out all the names of the rock formations for us (seems very common for Chinese to name all their rocks using their vivid imaginations)

the starting dock, and the raft we will soon be on

our view from the tip

the luxury cruise which also serve meals on board

the 9 horses mountain, like I said use your imagination

About 1.5 hours later, the driver not so excitedly announced to us (or me) that he had to drop us off at a town called Xinping since they weren't allowed to go all the way to Yangshuo (only the cruise can do that), but there would be buses that has been arranged to take us there from Xinping.

our driver that reveled the big secret to me

This was also when I learned about how the Chinese work their tourism development:
Typically, once the government decides to develop a region's attraction, they will only allow one "official route", and all other tourist related activities will be regulated, but they don't always do a good job at offering the best options so other locals will always have some alliterative, and by different means, the locals will work out deals with the officials to continue running and hence our wonderful experience (also because we were too cheap to just get on the cruise)

The town of Xinping turned out to be quite a peaceful town, it was still during New years so you could tell there were fire cracker remains eveywhere, but it was quite deserted at the time we arrived...

 By the time we got to Yangshuo it was already dark, but it didnt affect the number of people here, this town is really something else compared to where we were just at, perhaps because it is the drop off spot for the cruise, or because it was a travel hub to Guangzhou, another big city in the south. In the night, the street was filled with people and all the restaurants and the bars had people outside hollering over loud music.

fruit market we pass by on the way into Yangshuo

note the contrast to Xinping, and it was only 45 minutes away

Luckily, with a town like this, it was no problem finding accommodations without reservation, and we quickly settled down and were ready to set out bike riding around the area for the next day.

I forgot to mention, it was common in this part of China to find dog meat served on the menu, I was super super close to ordering one of the dog meat hot pot but unfortunately (or fortunately) Jeremy on our trip had an upset stomach so we just ended up finding a familar western restaurant and I settled with steak that night. (now that I think about it, it might have been the only steak I had in China)

 Until then, we will see what's next!