Days 10-14: Yangshuo and Xingping, Guangxi Province

Day 10 – In which “Lady Gaga is a 美国人” and I am the Master of Connect Four

The train ride was not bad. We met a company of people from Liu Zhou; they took up nearly the whole train car we were in. Their English was basically nonexistent and they would have to converse amongst themselves to think of difficult sentences like “What is your name?”, “Why are you in China?”, “Do you have a boyfriend?” (I lied which led to…) “Is he Chinese?” (No). They found one girl who had decent English, but they physically dragged her to where we were sitting. Once they stopped using her as a conduit for their questions, she chatted normally with us for a bit.

I took out my mini speaker sometime during the trip, and they were fascinated by it and started asking about my music tastes. Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga seemed to be the only common artists with them (sad). They also remarked, verbatim, “Lady Gaga is a Meiguoren!” which was hilarious to all of us, for whatever reason.

We arrived in Guilin and met up with Tracy, a connection of Jon-Michael’s. We weren’t sure what sort of person to expect, since the text she sent Marlie was to look for “a black coat and glasses”. She was around our age, and came with her friend Steven (a friend of her boyfriend). She helped us book our Guilin-Shenzhen train ticket successfully, and mailing a box of Li Jiang purchases back to Kaifeng. Immediately walking around Guilin, we noticed it was a little too similar feeling to Kaifeng and we weren’t sure we would enjoy that. I’m sure there are good things to do in Guilin, but after hearing multiple people tell us that we should skip Guilin and move on to Yangshuo where you can get the same things for cheaper and generally better, we told Tracy we wouldn’t be staying in Guilin that night.

She treated us to Guilin’s rice noodles (no soup, but with meat and egg and spices, quite good) and led us to the minibuses for Yangshuo. Only 15 kuai and we were on our way.

Our bus driver was a bit… giggly, in a way like “Oh hahahaha I almost hit that other bus, wheeee”. Rambo was also playing on the tv.

I was immediately glad of our decision to skip Guilin, as Yangshuo was smaller, but more welcoming than Guilin had felt at first sight. We had a small bit of trouble finding a hostel. We came across one, but it felt very cold and empty. We wanted to find Monkey Jane’s, a hostel highly recommended by our various sources. It was tucked away in an alley [see picture], and it took some time for us to find it because of that. But it was absolutely worth it and it was a great first dip into the dorm-style rooms (we’d been doing private doubles before). It was probably the worst bathroom in the whole trip, but it was warm (the room had a heater) and that was slightly more important to us.

We let ourselves be called into a restaurant with the promise of free beer with dinner, and instead of possibly regretting it (possibly bad food and just good beer?) it was delicious.

After dinner we went upstairs in our hostel, seeing the promise of the Amazing Rooftop Bar of the Marvelous Monkey Jane. It was awesome up there, and she even had a beer pong table set up, something I haven’t seen in a while, and definitely not in China. There was a big flat screen tv, heating fans for every table, and board games and a huge DVD collection underneath the tables. I found Connect Four and challenged Marlie. I won seven times of seven. I am the Master! I recall playing it a lot as a kid, so maybe it’s remembered skill, because I don’t play with any specific strategy.

As much as we liked the rooftop, we wanted to test out the rest of the area. We didn’t have much luck, since the few foreigners that were in Yangshuo weren’t handily gathered together, but rather clumped in small groups of 2-3 in each bar we found. We found some neat shops, but no company. Slightly disappointed, we returned to bed, and there was only one person there, and she was already asleep.

Day 11 – Moon Hill, not Moon Cave

Using a map that we found at the desk, we headed out to Moon Cave. Again, we purchased tickets from the hostel, thinking it would be easier for us. Unfortunately, we took our bus too far and into the next town (高田) so we had to take the same “bus” (a small van packing as many people as possible while still sitting) back about 5 minutes along the road to the entrance of Moon Hill. Old ladies tried to sell us Moon Hill tickets, but we told them we were trying for Moon Cave, not Moon Hill. We finally understood we needed to cross the road, where the ticket office was. It was closed. We stood around for a while, unsure of what to do. Another old lady tried to lead us down the road SOMEWHERE, but we told her we would just go to Moon Hill instead (we knew where that was, at least, after accidentally trying to get in with our cave tickets). We were surrounded by the old hawking ladies again as we bought our tickets from the window . We didn’t want to chance giving them money and not being able to get in with their possibly fake tickets (it was only 15 kuai per person at the window). It was weird that they were all gathered right outside the entrance, though.

We’d missed a larger group going up to the hill, but it didn’t matter much as it was pretty easy to navigate the hill. You go up.

Yet another old lady started following us up the hill, slowly, with her box of water (a little a la Jishnu from Good Woman) and postcards. She knew just enough English to be dangerous, and we couldn’t shake her. There was only one way up and one way down, after all. She did help when the path forked and told us the faster way up, but we were still wary of being too near her in case she tried to pull a fast one on us.

We reached the hill, and as usual, had great views of the surrounding scenery. The old lady again pushed “10 yuan postcards? Water?” and had also added a new phrase of “one hot, one tired”, referring to me and Marlie respectively (I was going pretty fast up the stairs and stripping layers). We went as high as the path allowed, let her take a picture of the two of us (slightly afraid she would take the camera, but where would she go? We were clearly faster than she was), and as we descended, we finally bought water off her. We got a little ahead of her and she completely disappeared.

We took the “Vanity” path which was a better overlook of the small village below, and is where this picture comes from, looking backward towards the hill.

Returning to the town, we ate at Lucy’s, a cool restaurant with scribbling all over the walls. I had the tastiest burger yet, onion rings, and a pot of ginger tea (famous in the area). We explored the stores nearby a little, and we found a store with many things “Obamao”. Here’s a picture…

With enough exploring completed, we decided we didn’t want to be disappointed again with the bars in the area (we could really tell we were visiting in the off-season) so we returned to Monkey Jane’s and went straight to the rooftop.

This was a fabulous decision. We arrived earlier than we had the night before, and Monkey Jane herself invited us to sit with her and watch things on her laptop. We chose an American faux-documentary movie called “The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down”. A really tall (6’8”) white guy came up to the bar partway through the movie and joined us. The four of us started chatting more when the movie finished, and he said he was teaching in South Korea, but from South Africa. Monkey Jane had pretty good English, but her indistinct accent made her hard to understand. She taught us a bluffing dice game that we’d seen some Chinese men playing a few days ago. It was a good game, and if you lost the bluff, you had a shot of beer. When we got a bored with the game (though that took a while), she brought over shots that I *think* she said came from her jar with snakes in it. But I could be mistaken. We all went to bed shortly after, found that Aidan (the South African) was in the same dorm as us and the girl from last night had left, so we weren’t bothering anyone returning to the dorm so late.

Day 12 – Dragon Water Cave

We were able to convince Monkey Jane to accompany us to the water cave the night before. This was very good because she’d been there multiple times and would know exactly what to do, unlike us. We also invited Aidan, since he didn’t seem to have other plans. So we all woke up, showered, had breakfast on the rooftop (sans Monkey…) and waited in the entryway. Finally we asked the other girl working and she called Monkey. She hadn’t even woken up yet. So we waited a little longer, Monkey apologized for her tardiness, and we were off.

This was another great decision of ours, as the cave with Monkey, was a great time. I’ve never been in a cave before, so I thought it was particularly cool. It’s hard to capture caves with photos, but I attempted. I have video that is decent, at least.

Monkey translated what she could of our tour guide (we needed to have someone guiding us along with a flashlight, we couldn’t just explore ourselves, and I think it would have been quite difficult anyway), so we got a taste of what a typical Chinese tour was like. It was just a lot of “oh this rock looks like a dragon, kind of”, and “these stalactites form an elephant, don’t you think?” and making up random stories about shapes. I didn’t really care and sometimes couldn’t see what he pointed out. I was just happy being in a freaking CAVE.

We’d explored the entire cave and passed by the mud baths (faaar too cold to do) but knew we could do the hot springs. I wasn’t expecting to be needing a swimsuit on our trip (I did bring some to China, but left them in Kaifeng), and neither was Marlie, so we both stripped down to bra and underwear. The hot spring area was small-ish, and the pools were obviously naturally-made. Monkey convinced us (it wasn’t that hard) that we should all buy a beer and drink them in the hot springs. It was a very good idea indeed and was refreshing against the hazy heat of the springs. There was a sign saying that we could only be in the springs for ten minutes, but I think we sat there for at least 45. The picture here is one taken by some guys running the hot spring area that we all bought for 10 kuai.

In total, we were in the cave for at least four hours. We got back to Yangshuo, and with Aidan, had dinner at a restaurant directly across from Monkey Jane’s alley. Black-pepper steak, lasagna, chicken schnitzel, and cheesecake were our choices, and the phrase “cheesecake crawl” (after talking about pub crawls) was coined while we ate. Knowing that the bar situation had not changed since last night, we all returned to the rooftop to rejoin Monkey.

I grabbed her DVD collection, as Monkey said it was fine if we wanted to watch something on the flat screen tv. Aidan and I were in the mood for something mindless, and we found a Sci-Fi (SyFy- I hate the new abbreviation) movie called Pterodactyl. It sounded PERFECT, and oh, it so was. I don’t know if Marlie quite appreciated the glory of a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie. We tried guessing the order and means of each character’s death, and we were right probably 75% of the time. We watched a second movie, The Sitter, because of its cover promising a babysitter + bloody hammer. It did not deliver. It was merely a bad-bad movie rather than an awesome- bad one. It also started skipping near the end and we didn’t find out how it concluded (Oh. No. The tragedy. /sarcasm). We “talked shit” with Aidan (as he phrased it) long into the night until Monkey kicked us out and then went to bed. This is a picture of what the dorm room looked like in daylight, of course, not at night. A maximum of 6 people could sleep in there.

Day 13 – Jeanie

Our stay in Yangshuo had to finish that day since we really wanted to see Xingping and meet up with a CouchSurfer, Jeanie. (Google it if you don’t know), and we only had one more day before our train from Guilin to Shenzhen. If we could have, I think we’d have stayed a few more nights. Alas, we had to leave.

We snagged a one-hour bus to Xingping. I slept the whole way. Yangshuo had a very simple “bus station”. It was just a parking lot with destination signs in the bus windows, or in a few cases, hanging above if they were parked under cover. Easy.

Jeanie texted me the directions to her art gallery/home, and they were simple enough. She’s Australian, but has been living in China for over six years if I recall correctly. She still knows very very little Chinese; she seemed a little resistant to learning it for some reason. We met her grandson Clint, who works in Shenzhen and had just gotten married a few days earlier. They were both very chatty people and she provided us with a lot of tangential stories, tea, and snacks, including pomelos, a fruit somewhat similar to grapefruit though not as sour. Xingping seemed to be the land of pomelos, too, as there were trucks and trucks filled with them there.

Jeanie led us to the only hostel in town, This Old Place, which was incredibly nice, even as they were refurnishing and adding MORE wood accents to the already super wooden décor. It was also the second (and last) of our hostels with heat, and so we steamed up the room and it was glorious. It would be a really terrific place to stay in the (proper) springtime and autumn. I don’t think I’d want to travel anywhere we did in the summer because of my aversion to heat.

Anyway, we unloaded, and met with Jeanie again for dinner. It was a very Kaifeng-esque meal: cheap, fried egg rice, noodles with veggies, and an egg/tomato soup. Jeanie also said she could organize a river tour with a guide who knew a little English.

Our beds were warm, and my eye hurt from a mysterious scratch over my eyelid, but all was well.

Day 14 – End of the Karst

I haven’t mentioned it thus far, but the description for the mountains we saw in the Yangshuo region are called “Karst”. I haven’t bothered to check what it means or WHY they’re named that, but this would be our last day among them.

I had the best shower ever- even though the bathroom was downstairs from our room, it heated up quickly and didn’t run out of hot water (like in previous hostels).But I did have to run up the metal spiral staircase in wet socks. We met Jeanie again for tea before breakfast and to arrange our boat tour. The day was wonderfully warm in the sun, but significantly chillier in the shade. James, our guide, arrived, and with a lot of confusion we finally got him to understand that we had to do the tour TODAY because we were leaving on a train that night. He hadn’t had lunch (he was quite late), and so we waited even longer, chatting with Jeanie outside in the sun on benches. An old “eccentric painter” (Jeanie’s phrase) came and set up his strips of paintings across from us. Marlie and I each bought one for cheap, even though Jeanie said he would just be using the money to drink that night.

James finally returned and we were off for our boat ride on the Li River. It was beautiful, but our enjoyment was hindered by the breeze off the cold water and lack of sun when we went under the shade of the mountains. We paid for the longest ride available, but there wasn’t much distinction between any docking areas, and so he really could have turned around at any point and told us that it was our stop. We were so cold, it didn’t really matter. James was also the slowest raft in the water, I noticed.

We only had one more mission for the day, which was to climb up the local mountain, Lao Zhai Shan. We passed another funeral on our way back to town, and James had pointed out earlier that it was for a man who was 96 years old. It didn’t have the intensity of the other funeral we’d witnessed (maybe because of the age of the deceased). They seemed to be in the midst of a meal, but for the rest of the day we heard booms and cracks of explosions from the site of the funeral.

Lao Zhai Shan had what you could call “steps.” It wasn’t nearly as paved and man-made feeling as some of the other mountains and hills we’d climbed up. That was nice for a while, and then it was just tiring. We reached the top and met a guy from Shanghai. He had me take pictures and VCD for him and he was oddly particular about the angles and such, but still a nice guy. He knew enough English to chat with us for a few minutes, and then we all walked down together. Walking down Lao Zhai Shan felt more treacherous than walking up. (As it did with Moon Hill and Cangshan.)

We picked our luggage up from the hostel (all the hostels we stayed at let us store our things after checkout if we needed), said goodbye to Jeanie, and caught a bus to Yangshuo just about to leave. I thought it would be easiest to eat in Yangshuo, where we were familiar with restaurants, and then head on to Guilin, instead of wasting time trying to find an acceptable place to eat in either Xingping or Guilin, neither of which we were familiar. We ate a quick dinner at the China Café, the same place we’d eaten with Aidan a few days earlier, hopped on a bus to Guilin, and got on our train. Our train left Guilin at 9:30pm so we weren’t expecting the lights to be on long (they turn them off during the night), but it was enough time to meet another American, Ramadan from Phoenix, who worked in Hong Kong and was returning after a short vacation himself. Lights went out around 10:40pm; I stayed up a little longer playing my DS and then slept.

Days 4-9: Li Jiang and Dali, Yunnan Province

Day 4 – Day Bus

We were done with Kunming, so it was on to our next destination, Li Jiang. We certainly could have spent a little more time in Kunming, but it would have been mostly museums and wandering in the same areas, so it was time to go.

The bus was nine hours, all in daylight. It didn’t honestly feel as long as it was, except for the last hour or so. We were also prepared to be in a bus all day, so there was that.

This was when I really started utilizing my journal- I only have a page of notes for the past three days, but Day 4 got two pages of doodles and notes.

We stopped three times: two bathroom breaks and one food break. The bathroom we used during the food break was, hands down, the most “interesting” and rural I’ve experienced. There were “stalls”; walls about 1.5 feet high separated the trough of water flowing beneath us, and we could hear pigs squealing and oinking very nearby (likely in the shed-covered area to the immediate left). I don’t think I can complain about toilets ever again after using those. (Or really any in China.)

Also during the food break we started chatting up the other foreigners (three) on the bus with us. The two younger guys were more interesting than the older man; Lee was Scottish, and Sebastian (or Seb) was Swedish. I talked more with them at the last pitstop and we all ended up hanging out with their friends (already in Li Jiang) for dinner and drinks. There was Jameson from Philly, his new Chinese girlfriend (name forgotten, and she didn’t talk much anyway), Charles from Quebec, and Joe from Bristol. It took some time for their friends to meet up with us outside the old city, get to the hostel (they got us lost), check in, clean up, and then find a place to eat. It was absolutely frigid in the restaurant, because as usual, there was no heating. Yunnan Province is beautiful and definitely warmer than Henan and Kaifeng, but it’s still cold enough that there REALLY should be heating in buildings. It’s something I do NOT understand about China. But the dinner was still ridiculously fun. Afterward we got hoodwinked into cabs (a lot was peer pressure, and Lee was being a strong handed drunk and saying we should get in) to a dud club. We were hardly in the club for a few minutes before we found a way out, grabbed a few more beers at the convenience store nearby, and returned to the hostel for the rest of the night.

Day 5 – Shop Shop Shop!

Marlie and I had already made the decision to spend the whole day wandering the old town. Li Jiang’s old town is a labyrinth of cobblestone roads and shops and river twisting through it, so it would easily entertain us for the day. Breakfast consisted of 粑粑 baba, a sweet cake/pastry, fried noodles, and yak yogurt. It was suuuuper tasty, if overpriced. But comparing prices to Kaifeng, everything is overpriced.

We tested out our bargaining skills, and we definitely got some good deals, though there were times we just didn’t care enough to try. We still spent quite a bit of money. Li Jiang is a great place to shop, and there are lots of things that you can only find in there, but beyond that, there’s not a lot more to hold your attention if you’re not shopping.

I wanted to get some tea and there were definitely no shortage of tea shops. I picked a random one, and I heard someone call for the owner of the shop. He pulled us into the backroom, and I was afraid we were about to be sucked into a situation we couldn’t get out of. But it was actually quite pleasant, as he showed us all the tea he sold. He was the only one who knew any English in the shop, and so we chatted and he made tiny tiny glass cups of tea for us. It was quite a process—he had to clean the cups, and everything involved in the tea-making with hot water and/or tea before serving it to us. He poured the water and tea all over the stone “shelf” specially set up in the corner of the shop. It was a very neat experience that I’m not sure we would have gotten in any tea shop. We were swayed, as it was very good tea, and I bought both his green and black tea. He sold rose tea as well and the tea-soaked flowers could be mashed into a paste to create lotion. A neat extra, and he let us try it, but the tea itself was too flowery for my tastes (I generally stick to black and green).

We came upon a lot of inns or restaurants with dog sentries like this one:

At some point in the afternoon, a foreign guy came up to us with a flyer for a western-style restaurant. It was called LMC, Li Jiang Millionaire’s Club, and he told us that they have different dinner specials every night. It sounded cool and so we told him we would stop by. A little more shopping was to be had, I ate some yak meat on a stick (everything was yak yak yak there), and we set out for the LMC. Turned out, he was one of the owners. He was from Seattle, and the other guy was from Australia. We had their Indian dinner special (naan, curry, soup, and rice) and Lazy Dog Pizza, and I got apple pie. It was all. So. Good. We chatted with both of the owners as they washed dishes and promised we’d come back for breakfast the next day.

After realizing how much money we’d spent that day, we made an early night of it with some tv shows (Supernatural and/or How I Met Your Mother) on Marlie’s laptop.

Day 6 – Superficial Springs and Smoke

As promised, we went to the LMC for breakfast after a short reunion and farewell in the hostel with the guys we’d met two nights earlier. At the LMC I had fantastic pancakes with yogurt, honey, and banana on top. We even ate in the sunshine because it was so much warmer. It felt like it would be another good day.

Since we had a shorter bus to Dali from Li Jiang, we wanted to make the most of our extra time. We walked out of the old town and to the Black Dragon Mountain Forest Spring Pool or however many adjectives it had. We tried to sneak in like Joe had done the day before (and regaled us about that morning), but failed. It was 80 kuai to get in, which we thought a bit steep, but we decided to make the best of it. Sadly, other than the pool, there wasn’t much to see in the area. We also unfortunately got roped into our first (and hopefully last) tourist scam. We noticed a Phoenix Temple nearby and had barely got in the doorway when a woman accosted us with incense. We accepted, hoping we would just pay a few kuai, if anything, to place them near a Buddha like we’d seen so many Chinese do in plenty of other temples. Instead, she led us to an alcove where a “monk” (I suspected his authenticity) held our hands and did lots of complicated motions with the incense and some clapping. Afterward, he showed us a guestbook where other sad folks had gotten roped in as well and then said “Money?” We grudgingly handed over 50 each. So now we’d spent 130 kuai to get into a pretty useless and boring park (other than the pool area which was not as impressive as it could have been). Feeling disheartened and unable to wander aimlessly for much longer, we made an early break from Li Jiang.

At least we left with this Chinglish (sadly, that’s a pretty close approximation to what it says in Chinese too. Why???):

Thankfully, it was easy to get to the bus station and we got a bus leaving in ten minutes. We sat in the very back row crammed with most of our stuff. It seated five, and two were already occupied by two Australians, Mike and Tom, from Perth. We all agreed it would be better if no one else came to claim the now half-seat between us. We were not that lucky. A Chinese man came and sat between our groups.

The bus ride was hellishly smoky. At least five men in front of us were heavy smokers, and so there were barely a few minutes before one of them would light another cigarette. At least, in the back, we had access to the windows, and so I could open the windows to get some fresh air, but it wasn’t always enough. That is another thing I absolutely positively will NOT miss about China—the persistent smoking of ALL the men. At least the man squeezed next to me wasn’t smoking. He actually offered us some gum, which was nice of him. Eventually he left and we were able to expand.

This bus also functioned as a free bus for some people who were seemingly waiting in the middle of NOWHERE, to hop on, stand and ride, and then get off again in the middle of NOWHERE. It was all very surreal. After a bit of anxiety about where our final stop was, we got off the bus with the Australians, and took a taxi together to the Jade Emu hostel. The Jade Emu was by far the nicest hostel we’d seen. It had a gorgeous courtyard, and the room had both heating pads AND a heating fan. We also got BBC World News and Stars Movies at night on the television. Our dinner was also a relief after the disappointing morning at the Good Panda in the old town. It was probably the best beef and vegetables I’ve ever had. We inadvertently followed the Australians to the same restaurant and we finally had a proper conversation, rather than the forced introductions we’d had in the taxi. We told them we would be heading to the Bad Monkey bar shortly, and they were welcome to join us there, which they did later that night.

While we were searching for food, we spotted the Beloiters we’d met in Kunming, but didn’t have the presence of mind to yell at them. Marlie commented that we could have yelled “BELOIT!” and they likely would have turned around.

Bad Monkey was a cool place to hang out, but I could tell that it was a far more happening place in the summertime. We still met two other American girls, Ayesha and Kendall from DC. All of us (including the Aussies) were staying for the next three nights, and it would be very likely we’d run into each other again (which we did). I personally got along better with the girls than the guys- the conversations we had with Mike and Tom were a tad strained, but it was still good to talk to people with English as their native language, and so I tried to enjoy it as much as I could.

When we returned to the hostel, Drag Me to Hell was on Stars, one of those bad-funny movies. We only caught the end, but I know Marlie and I made a lot of stupidly great comments about it before collapsing into sleep.

Day 7 – At least 15 kilometers

Gogo Café provided us with breakfast this morning on the recommendation of Kendall and Ayesha. We didn’t want to attempt Cangshan (mountains) that day so we set out around town, quickly exiting and spotting the famous three pagodas. Marlie had read the night before that it was not worth the price to enter the park, and so we walked literally as close to the pagodas as we could without paying. Our path led us up stairs along the wall where at least twenty vendors were stationed. We also weren’t keen on paying a lot of money after our fiasco at Black Dragon Spring Mountain Pool Whatever Park, so we turned and headed east. (It was very easy to navigate Dali, as the mountains run exactly north-south.) This led us to a gold phoenix plaza overlooking the pagodas and mountains. It was quite empty except for a handful of vendors, which you can barely see in this photo.

We continued walking, with only the general idea that we wanted to go to Erhai Lake. Before that, though, we ran into what looked like an abandoned district. It was the site for a photography expo in 2009 and hadn’t been used since (we learned this later from an Australian woman back at the hostel) as the guy who owned the land was in serious debt, or in jail or something and so it was just sitting there, unused and empty. I sort of wanted to explore it at night, but it felt eerie enough by day, and I don’t think Marlie would have joined me.

Clearly these haven’t been used in a while. Look at that sink!

The walk to the lake took far far longer than we anticipated, and we were the ONLY people walking along the road; everyone else was biking or busing. We knew it was the right direction; we’d just poorly judged how long it was going to take. There was a ferry for the river, but it cost at least 120 kuai and we still felt spurned over spending money in Li Jiang, and so chose to trek along the edge of the river instead. This got a little wet, as you can see…

Also since we had the time, we decided to turn into a village instead of turning around, because what’s the fun in going back a direction you’ve already taken? Sadly, this only led us to a dead-end within the town (we would have needed to cross over a lot of farmland to reach the road again, and I felt that would be rude, tramping over someone’s crops), so we were forced to turn back.

When we were walking forever on the road to Erhai we were able to determine that the #2 bus could at least bring us back some distance to our hostel. So many of them passed us by as we walked, and at this point we had walked at least 15km around the town and down to the lake, so we wanted to take a bus as far back to the hostel as possible. We were correct in our assumption, and got off a little distance from the west gate of the old town and headed to the hostel for some rest.

Dinner was at Café de Jack, and the Aussie boys joined us since they clearly had no better plans. Talking with them was still a bit of an effort, and I wasn’t surprised that they had an excuse to return to the hostel instead of heading to the Bad Monkey again like we wanted. We tried a special drink of Bad Monkey’s which turned out to be Malibu, mango juice, and grenadine, which I know sounds god-awful sweet to most people, but I really enjoyed it. That night we got bored fairly quickly with the bar, and so returned to the hostel and our Stars Movies. (I’m not misspelling it- it wasn’t Starz Movies, it was Stars.) It was My Bloody Valentine starring Jensen Ackles. We both thought it was hilariously bad and it was a good end to a long day of walking.

Day 8 – Mountains

Being in Dali, it’s hard NOT to notice the mountain range. And doing research prior, Dali was the area I wanted to do a little bit of mountain climbing or exploring. Also, being Day 8, I thought I would still have the energy for it (which I did). Unfortunately, we both slept in a little bit and so we had a hurried, but delicious “American breakfast” at the Yunnan Café (across from Gogo) so we could catch a taxi that would take us up to the mountain park entrance. The taxi wound us up and up through a village near the foot of the mountain entrance. At one point we stalled because of a funeral. I was grateful we were in a car, and not on foot, because I seriously would have felt I was intruding. One woman was screaming and wailing like I’ve never heard from a human, and being held back by four others. A few men were hoisting the coffin onto their shoulders and ready to carry it up the mountain. It was just startling to see a funeral so publicly and on a main road.

We’d actually booked the day through the hostel, and it was about 50 kuai cheaper than if we’d tried to do it all ourselves. One of the Chinese workers from the hostel came with us in the taxi to take care of the tickets, so it was completely hands-off for us. Fantastic!

We took the longest gondola ever up the mountain. It took us about 1/3 of the distance up and the rest were trails and paths curling their way around the mountains. If we hadn’t slept in, we could have trekked one-way and taken a different cable-car down on the other end of the mountain, but the cable-cars shut down at around 6pm, and so we had to double-back. We still managed to make it pretty far, even while tromping along in the snow. It was extremely refreshing; the view was spectacular, the area was crisp, and we hadn’t had any serious travel or money problems (since the last one). We returned to the hostel with very very wet shoes (and boots in Marlie’s case), though.

Because of our hiking, we were both completely famished after we attempted to dry our shoes (Marlie had to switch to a different pair. I used the hair dryer to get mine back in working condition), so we made a second trip to the Good Panda and ordered a TON of food. When we were done, the waiter looked stunned that we’d actually eaten everything. Here’s a shot sometime in the middle of dinner. It included Bai-style potatoes, a broccoli/carrot mix, ginger fried eggplant (the red one), celery with beef, and a barrel of rice (in the upper right corner). The beef plate is maybe ¼ of the size it was when we received it. Every single dish was delicious.

Marlie was finally offered ganja after dinner. Mike had been offered the night before while we were searching for a restaurant, but he also looked the type to accept weed. We’d been told Dali is a place to get it if you desired (which we did not) but it was still amusing and exciting for Marlie to finally be offered. It was like being part of a secret club.

On another recommendation from Ayesha and Kendall, we visited two bakeries for some breakfast foods for the next morning (since we would be leaving). We got some, and I also bought some tasty looking raspberry jam (I can’t find any in Kaifeng! It’s only ever strawberry), which I got made fun of for carrying the rest of the trip. (I guess carrying a jar of jam while traveling is a little odd.) Then we had the best. Cheesecake. Ever. At a bakery run by two men hard of hearing (the window had a sign saying so).

We watched some Supernatural from the Jade Emu DVD collection and concluded our night.

Day 9 – Navigational Nightmare

We were completing our time in Yunnan Province with a bus back to Kunming to catch a train to Guilin, in Guangxi Province, the province to the east of Yunnan. We also were giving ourselves over seven hours to get from Dali to the train station, and so we thought we could visit a museum in the downtime.

First off, I started getting anxious when our taxi to the bus station to catch our Kunming bus was not arriving. Our bus would leave in ten minutes! The taxi arrived, we threw our stuff in, and… he crossed the street. It wasn’t a bus station, it was just a gravel-not-even-a-parking lot. Annoyed about worrying, but relieved, the bus ride was uneventful. We had two grannies in the seats in front of us, one looked about 100 years old and the other would talk even LOUDER when she spoke on the telephone. I think I slept.

Immediately returning to Kunming, things went wrong. We didn’t know which bus EXACTLY to get to the train station, but we knew how to get to the center of town. However, we could not find the bus stop for the bus we ideally wanted. So we took another option. That took at least 40 minutes, dragging our stuff around and around the block.

The bus itself was insane- we got seats, thankfully, but with our stuff and about ten billion other people squashed up to us and the awful traffic (Kunming’s population seemed to have tripled since we’d been there last) it made for a very irritating bus ride. And only to the middle of the downtown area. We still had to find our way to the train station. We knew exactly where it was, but no idea on the means.

Lunch was at McDonald’s and we tried to take advantage of the wifi, but this was one of the few (of the entire trip) that did not have any. Marlie noticed that the flyer for the Hump had directions from the train station to the Hump, and that maybe we could take the same bus, just in the opposite direction. It was our best shot.

We were wrong, of course. It headed to the north train station, and not the main one like we needed. SILLY US. So we got off once I realized where it was heading and tried to get a taxi. Which took forever, even with Marlie’s awesome taxi-grabbing skills. We weren’t pressed for time or anything, but there would be no down-time in a museum in this return trip to Kunming (plus the Zoology museum that I wanted to see was CLOSED that day; we checked beforehand). We were both slightly irritated and just wanted to be at the train station in time for our train.

We reached the train station with about an hour extra and finally got to relax. Marlie accidentally melted her bottle with the drinkable hot water and so had to buy another. We experienced another example of Chinese impatience. About 25 minutes before the trains boarded, people started crowding and shoving to be first in line. I do not understand this unless there are standing room only tickets, there’s no reason to be first on the train when everyone has a specific seat or bed (we had hard beds). This was just a cherry on top of our irritation with the day, so it was good to sleep once we got settled on the train.

Up next... Yangshuo and Xingping of Guangxi Province.