Traveling after Teaching (Yangshuo)

Unfortunately, I have to begin this entry with one of the stupidest things I think I have ever done. After I got out of Guilin’s airport I took a taxi to the bus station (Yangshuo is an hour south of Guilin by bus). As soon as I got to the bus station, I paid the taxi cab driver and got on a bus to Yangshuo with my backpack. As soon as I stepped on the bus, I yelled a series of obscenities-I had just realized that I left my suitcase in the trunk of the taxi. A man that seemed to be a manager of the buses told me to come with him. We went to a taxi cab company and they said there was nothing they could do about it. We went to talk to some other taxi cab drivers and they gave us a number. We called the number but it didn’t seem like it helped much. Finally we figured that since it was an airport taxi that someone would be in charge of them at the airport. The man told me we had to go back to the airport to see if we could talk to someone. After the 40 minutes it took to get back to the airport, we found the woman in charge of the drivers. In true Chinese fashion, as soon as we began to present my predicament to the woman, a crowd of taxi cab drivers gathered around, each wanting to put in their two cents, each sounding as though they were the authority on the matter. At one point, while trying to explain something to the man, I had to turn around to shush the taxi cab drivers to make myself even audible to the man.
(sidenote: this is a common characteristic among Chinese people-any public situation that seems even slightly out of the ordinary is met with a crowd of people. Furthermore, any such situation that necessitates some sort of assistance or information on the part of the second party can easily be met with not one, but many other parties. I’ll present you with a few examples. Just today while I was eating lunch, a woman dramatically dropped her tray of food just as she was walking away from the counter. Now, normally, one would expect people to turn around to see what the commotion was about. However, people did not just turn around from their seats. People actually got up OUT OF their seats to stand around the mess…just looking at it. A few days ago at the airport, a woman was throwing a tantrum and seemed to be having some sort of mental breakdown. Two men were trying to get her under control but to no avail as she continued to scream, throw her cell phone against the ground, and kick her legs. A crowd of at least fifty gathered around to stare. I’ve even seen people watch and stare at men working on the light poles on a street.)
The woman made a call to her taxi cab drivers. Amazingly, a minute later one called back and said he had it. We got his phone number and taxi number. We had to take the airport shuttle back, which was another 40 minutes. Before the man called the taxi cab driver, he sat me down and basically said that he wouldn’t call the driver unless I paid him 100 yuan. I was like, “What…the…fuck.” I just spent 85 on a taxi cab ride to the bus station, and then 80 for our tickets to the airport and back. I tried to reason with him…partially because I knew that he didn’t make 100 yuan in maybe even a few days worth of work, but he would not listen or bargain with me. Then we had to take a bus to the place where we were going to meet the driver. After I got my luggage, he had the gall to ask me to call him if I was going to stay in Guilin longer. “Yea, you just screwed me out of 100 yuan, I think I can really trust you to show me a good time in Guilin, you fuckhead.” What’s funny is that when I came back to Guilin, I saw him leading some other foreigner around. I was really tempted to come up to him and tell the foreigner to watch out for him.
After visiting Yangshuo, it very well may be my favorite city in China. It is in south central China and has become a popular destination for backpackers in the last few years or so. Yangshuo has one of the most recognizable natural landscapes that China has to offer. Thin lime stone mountains, covered in vegetation, jut up jaggedly from the ground. Although it is fairly touristy (as any place of interest is in China), it was still a pretty small town/city and there was so much to do there. I didn’t arrive until later in the afternoon because of my ordeal. As soon as I stepped off the bus in Yangshuo, I was greeted by a young man who came up to me and said, “Do you need hostel? Hostel?” I said, “No, I’ve already booked with Monkey Jane’s Hostel.” The man replied, “No! Monkey Jane’s will f--- your money! They will f--- your money!” I said, “I don’t care, Monkey Jane’s was recommended to me by many people and I intend to keep my reservation.” Then he said, “OK…well I can take you there.” So I got on the back of his motorbike and he dropped me off not far away. On the way, he told me, “How about you come to my hostel today and then if you like, you stay.” I said, “Nope!” That guy charged me twenty for which should have been a five yuan ride. After that, he pointed me in the wrong direction to Monkey Jane’s. Yea, see if I stay at your hostel, you jerk off.
I was first told about Monkey Jane’s after some teachers from my city went there over the Spring Festival holiday. They said it was some of the most fun they ever had staying at a hostel. Monkey Jane is owned by the woman of its namesake. She might be the most untraditional Chinese woman I have ever met…which actually goes for every woman who worked at Monkey Jane’s, but Monkey Jane in particular. She would swear at guests, get drunk with her guests, and openly talk about her sexual escapades with her guests. Her rooftop bar is infamous for its beer pong. Monkey Jane guests can win free t-shirts by beating her at beer pong. Every single night of the four nights in Yangshuo, I stayed on her rooftop bar. Great fun had by all!
Two of the most interesting people I met at Monkey Jane’s were two guys who said they were working in Bali, Indonesia. Both were in their mid to late twenties and said they had planned on going to a few different countries, spending some time working at each one, but they have stayed in Bali for the last 9 months. They have the ultimate bachelor’s pad and are getting into some real business there.
But back to Yangshuo itself. The first full day I had, I went biking with my roommate, an American named Richard, and a guy I met at the bar the night before, Daniel, from Costa Rica. Richard didn’t end up striking the right cord with me by the end of the day, and you’ll see why, but Daniel was one of the nicest, most laid back people I have ever met. We decided that a good route would be to go to a town north of Yangshuo called Xing Ping, because apparently they had a good weekend market. Also, we would have the option of taking a raft down the river back to Yangshuo. As we made our way to Xing Ping, we stopped at a run down convenience store and noodle place to avoid the few minutes of torrential rainfall. I don’t know why, but it was a fairly striking moment being on the side of this road with some poorer Chinese people, eating some tasty noodles while the rain was coming down. You just had to be there, I suppose.
Afterwards we continued our trek. After another 45 minutes or so we got to Xing Ping. It was relatively touristy, but the main streets were definitely alive with the market. However, merchants and people trying to get us to do boat tours on the river constantly hounded us. One woman would not leave us alone. I told her that we didn’t want anything and to go away, but she persisted. What makes me even angrier in these situations is when the other person smiles, as if they think you are joking…which is what this woman was doing (again, I think this is a Chinese characteristic…where as we do it to intentionally piss someone off more, they do it to say, “Hey, nothing is wrong.” But nevertheless, I always interpret it in the former). I finally got the woman to go away.
After leaving Xing Ping, we began to follow a trail on the map. The trail was along the river and we had to cross by ferry at one point. Just beautiful scenery, as you can see from the pictures.
Finally at one point, we realized that we were on a walking trail and it was impossible to go any further on our bikes so we had to find an alternate route. This alternate route snaked all around and on top of the mountains…and it was a dirt and gravel road, which made it particularly to pedal on. We stopped at some points just to take in everything around us. Finally we got on an actual paved bike trail (yes!) and it was basically smooth sailing from there (the last 15 km being almost entirely downhill. We stopped at a beekeeper’s tent to see if they had any water for us. They did, but then Richard asked if they had tea, and they did. Then, Richard asked if they had honey, and of course they had loads of it. Note that all this time Richard is speaking English and is making no effort in trying to use me to translate (which may not have helped THAT much) or to use body language to get his point across. He was also doing it before at the noodle place. Clearly, they were poor and assumedly not well educated. I said, “They don’t understand English, man,” but he continued. Finally he asked if they had any bread, which I thought got past a certain point and got into the realm of taking advantage of their already generous hospitality. So finally I lit into him a little bit, but he didn’t see what the big deal was. Later I talked to Daniel and he said, “I think you and I were on the same page…but Richard…”
In any case, we had pure honey and it was amazing.
By the time we got back, the sun had already set. We estimated that we had road our bikes somewhere between 60 and 70 km. Needless to say, we were all exhausted.
The next day, I decided to go out to a cave, which is a popular destination spot for tourists. I decided to bike out to the cave and it only took about half an hour or so. I had never really gone spelunking (cave exploring) before, so it was a good experience. At one point, there was a mud bath that had really thick mud that we bathed ourselves in. Of course, our great tour guide didn’t tell us anything about the geological history of the formations, but she expressed concern in showing us formations that looked like recognizable objects or people. “Look, it’s Santa Claus!” “It’s Buddha! See the belly!” “Take a picture of this! It’s a toothbrush!” It reminded me of my tour guide in Pingyao…”Look, a chair!” In any case, the cave was really cool. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera because I knew it could have easily gotten broken, muddy, or wet. After we left the cave, we hiked around the mountain and jumped in a pool at the entrance of the cave to get cleaned up.
My final day I decided to try something else I had never done before---rock climbing! It was hard as hell! I went with a guy from Jerusalem named Ayer, who was my roommate after Richard left. I was able to do about three and a half climbs, but by then, my arms were spaghetti. I literally had trouble tying my shoes without my arms shaking. It was fun though. The hardest part, along with constantly using your upper body strength, was positioning your body in such a way was sometimes the only way to get past a point. The only way to know how to position your body in a certain way at a given point was from experience.
The morning after that I left Yangshuo to spend the night in Guilin for my flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Luckily, my trip back to Guilin and the Guilin airport was completely uneventful.