China!

Ok, so I am not exactly getting along with uploading pictures, so I guess you’ll all just have to come see me in May! After Shanghai we flew to Guilin and there were about 12 or 13 of us in 4 separate groups, but then we all just got into two groups and one went right off to Yangshuo and the 7 of us stayed in Guilin for the night. We stayed at this great hostel called the Backstreet Youth Hostel which had a dorm room with 7 beds, which was perfect for us. Then we headed out on to the street, walked around a bit, then went to this restaurant for dinner that had tree trunks on the walls. And the menu! Oh my gosh, it was a book! We each got an entree and a dessert and split some pitchers of this sangria type stuff, plus Kyle got whole fish as an appetizer, and the whole thing came to about $13 a person. We were there for a solid 3 hours just enjoying each other’s company. Then we wandered back to the hostel and watched some Olympics and headed to bed.

We got up around 8 or so, found some breakfast, and hopped a van to where we met a fisherman who took us on a bamboo raft down the Li River for about 2 hours. This trip was pure magic! We glided just inches above the water, passing people doing their laundry on the rocks of the river, cows grazing on the shore line. And all of this under these amazing limestone mountains! They just jut up everywhere, these huge hunks of rock covered by plants. We passed quite a few other boats like ours and every couple turns in the river we would come across a little commune for the fisherman and nearby towns. We eventually landed back to reality and took another van ride to Xingping. In our van were a couple Canadians who taught English in China and were on holiday for the New Year. I plan on doing that in the near future, so maybe I’ll find some young travelers then, too!

We got this amazing lunch in Xingping from this place with the best fried noodles any of us had ever had and then we wandered through the market and got a lot of pictures. I met a 16 year old girl who wants to practice her English so she and I exchanged email addresses so I hope to hear from her. We eventually took a bus to Yangshuo and got rooms at Monkey Jane’s. What a hostel! Only 20 RMB a night, which is less than $3, and it had a rooftop bar and restaurant and just some really cool people. Kyle, Nic, Brook, Natali, and I headed to this night light show on the water that supposedly had 500 people in it. And wow, amazing! It was about this Chinese singer and her story. We couldn’t understand any of it since of course it was in Mandarin, but the singing was gorgeous, especially with the limestone mountains as the backdrop. I will try to get some pictures of it up here when we get to our next internet friendly port. And there were tons of men on bamboo rafts with lanterns, and the whole valley was the stage! It was just phenomenal. Then towards the end over 200 women came out on moving docks and walked from shore to shore in light up suits. Just amazing.

After the show we headed back to the hostel to meet up with Tucker and Emily up on the roof. There we met Craig, this Canadian who used to spend the winters in Thailand mountain climbing but then came out to Yangshuo for 5 weeks to check out the climbing there. He has been there for over a year now and is heading home this summer to say goodbye to everyone, then move to Yangshuo, open up a coffee shop that has a corner for English practice, and find a Chinese wife. He is a pretty interesting guy. We also met some guys from Holland, this girl Riika from Finland, a couple guys from the UK, some more Canadians, and this guy Stone from Inner Mongolia. What a place! It was such a great night; making fun of accents, talking about football (soccer!), and just having a crazy good time. There was this stuff called Snake Wine, which is liquor in a big jar with a snake coiled up at the bottom….from what I hear it was good, but I just couldn’t muster up my courage to try it! I’m sure I’ll find some in Viet’Nam.

The next day we met back up with Stone and Craig and biked out of town to where Stone works, this restaurant/hostel called the Giggling Tree. A guy from Holland had been biking through the countryside, just as we were doing, and saw all these abandoned, dilapidated old farm buildings and thought, “Huh, I could do something with that place.” And he did. He and his wife moved there, used local materials and local labor to fix the place up, and now in its 5^th year of business it is a thriving business. They have a 3 year old son who speaks Dutch, English, and Mandarin. Damn! What a life that little guy already has before him. But hell, what a life I am living! Thanks again MaPa. J We ate amazing food, including fried bananas with honey, fruit milk shakes, apple pie with raisins, and fried rice with diced ham, veggies, and peanuts. What a place! After we ate our fill we walked around a bit and all planned on coming back as soon as possible. There were people working there from Europe and China and the owners were so welcoming. Then, as if the day couldn’t get even more amazing, around the corner came a group of fellow SASers! Emily, Zack (both of whom I met through our Choco sandals), Eric, and this other girl who I don’t know came riding their bikes alongside us. On all the roads in all the towns of China! Too funny.

Eventually we hopped back on our trusty wheels and headed on down the road. We stopped a few times to just watch the river wind through the mountains. Oh my gosh, what a place. We eventually got to Moon Rock, which is a limestone mountain that has a huge hole in the top part. It looks a lot like a donut. Yeah Greenbush! Then we peddled our way back to Yangshuo but stopped on the outskirts of town to have some lunch at this great outdoor restaurant. Mom, oh my gosh would you have loved the kitchen; it had infinite bowls and spices and counter space. We ordered veggies, rice, beer fish, and a chicken hot pot. Then we went and watched our fish and chicken be killed and cleaned….and then we ate them! The freshest meat I’ll ever eat. The fish came cooked, but the chicken was just all cut up and put on a platter while a pot in the center of the table heated up. When the water was boiling we just dumped the whole chicken in, everything from the beak to the feet and everything, I mean EVERYTHING inside. The first thing I grabbed with my chopsticks was the neck….and I just couldn’t eat it. It was just a bunch of cartilage and yeah. But I did eat an egg sack, which is just the yolk of an egg. We also found floating around in there the whole group of maturing eggs. It was like a bunch of yellow grapes all packed together. Very interesting. A professor of mine pointed out today that it is because of our wealthy culture that we disregard so much of the chicken and other animals before we eat them. To us drum sticks come in abundance and we don’t think about the rest of the animal, where as people of poorer nations eat everything including the brains and the feet. It was an eye opening and taste broadening experience.

On our way back into town we stopped and got some snacks for the long bus ride that night to Shenzen, a town on the China side of the China/Hong Kong border. I got what I thought were oreos but instead they were cookies with egg yolkish stuff in the middle. Oh well! We dropped our bikes off and said our goodbyes, then Kyle, Natali, Nic, and I headed to catch our bus back to Guilin to get on an overnight bus to Shenzen. When we got to the bus station we got excited because we saw the sleeper buses and had beds, but then we found our bus that was just a plain bus. Whatever, we’re in China. And I sat next to Kyle and we watched a movie on his iPod then used each other as head rests for the rest of the ride. We got into Shenzen around 7:30 a.m. and walked around for quite a while because we were trying to find a market, but after an hour and a half of wandering we finally found the market, which was actually a produce market and not a clothes and gadgets market. But we got some great dim sum for breakfast, then hopped on a train to go through customs before entering Hong Kong. A couple metros later and we were at the Harbor City Mall, which is actually where our ship was docked. The Hong Kong people love to shop and there are malls freaking everywhere, so it was not surprising that all the big ships like our lovely MV Explorer was docked next to a cosmetics store. I did a little bit of internet goodies then headed out to explore the city. The metro system is amazing! It is touch screen so all you have to do is touch the station you want to go to and it tells you how much the fare will be. And there are lights on the maps telling you where you are and which direction you are traveling. Oh, so nice! And extremely blind person friendly; they even had maps in brail, as well as raised walking paths for people to follow with their canes. I got back to the ship around 5 or so and laid down for a quick nap with the intention of meeting people for dinner, but instead woke up at 9:15, found nobody left on the ship because they were all out on the town or still in Beijing, and so I did some reading and writing and went to bed to get some dearly needed sleep.

The next day I had a city tour for a class and we went all over and even up Victoria’s Peak which had an amazing view of the whole city. Then that night Heather and Mollsy babes and I went to the Temple Street Night Market and wow! What a place. The last day Molls and I went to this place called 10,000 Buddhas and ran into two more Badgers there. What a busy, vibrant place Hong Kong is.

And now? We are in Viet’Nam! Today we have the Chu Chi Tunnels, which are 25 miles worth of tunnels that the Vietnamese used during their wars against France and us. This is going to be the first of many difficult but needed and eye opening experiences.

Thank you all so much for reading this or skimming it or thinking of us. We miss you and love you and will be bugging you plenty come May. :)