I am very pleased to report that on our first day in Yangshuo – pronounced something like Yang-Shoe-er – we had no trains to catch, nowhere to check out from, and no activities planned.
So we lazed around, had a proper shower, and took ourselves back down to the lake for breakfast at the same place we’d had dinner last night. I had an omelette and cappucino, which took about 15 minutes to arrive, while Alice had dumplings which arrived just before we were ready to leave. But they were tasty. I had fallen into the cappucino trap again; it wasn’t the best coffee I’ve had, and for some reason warm drinks in China seem to cost a similar amount to what meals do. My omelette was 18 yuan and the ‘coffee’ was 20.
In the hotel we used our leisure time wisely by kicking around the internet, copying some pictures off a DVD from Andy, and then went looking for lunch while some other people in the group were out kayaking in the Li River. Kate spied a vegetarian restaurant in the Intrepid booklet for us, which we came across on our orientation walk, so we filed straight past the other restaurants only to find it was closed after lunch.
We had sadness in our hearts; and our hopes had been dashed. But we did still manage to find a decent cheap meal just around the corner.
There is a hill in the park in the middle of town, and on this hill there is a small pagoda-type building; and further to frequenting the vegetarian restaurant I also had ambitions of climbing this hill and sitting in this pagoda at either sunrise or sunset. But we were lined up for a boat cruise on the Li River today, and tomorrow we were going out to another hostel in the countryside where we would attend our cooking school and stay another couple of days. That left tomorrow morning and I just didn’t feel like an early morning; after a pit-stop at the bakery on the main road, and a few detours into camera shops to see if they sold lens-cleaning kits or remote trigger cables we did climb the hill, in the heat, and we then did sit in the pagoda.
We had to come back down at 3.30pm, and go back to the hotel, and then at 4pm leave for the river cruise. And on the way back down we saw a man with a sign saying that he was the owner of a collection of foreign banknotes, and would we donate. Turns out we are collectors too but we didn’t swap numbers, or emails. Or banknotes.
Going back a bit, in the middle of 2007 we had some visitors from one of the Geriatric hospitals in Beijing come over to Bankstown and stay for several weeks as visiting fellows. They observed, they went on rounds with Dr Chan, and they showed us several metric tons worth of photos per day. When they left Dr Liu (the unstated ‘chieftain’) gave everyone gifts of a booklet of paper cut-outs. Among the metric tons of photos there were pictures from Dr Liu’s holiday to southern China, where he went on a river cruise past some unusual rock formations. There is a rock face he showed us which is supposed to contain the outlines of nine horses. The more you can find, the more the average Chinese person will revere your fiendish intellect and pig-cunning. Apparently Chinese people will attempt to wait, if at all practical, so that their child may be born in the Year of the Pig.
And it began to dawn on me, in the van, that we were about to go on a tour down that same river, and go floating past those same nine horses.
Getting to the boat was surprisingly difficult. Our van driver took us on a racing ride through the countryside, with frequent use of the ‘Yes, I am coming past you’ horn beep, but when we reached what looked like the carpark the driver and went off for a walk, telling neither us nor Lilian where he was going. Then what sounded like an argument began. They speak a different dialect in this region so Lilian knew nothing of what they were saying, and neither did we, so we opened the van windows and the sliding door and sat there.
After a minute or two the driver came back and we took off down what looked sort of like a road but sort of a lot more like a cycling path. We’d gone about half a metre down that path when another van came from the other direction, and we had to back up and sort it all out so that we could have half a wheel off the path and they could have half a wheel off without either van falling about 2 feet down into the ditch which lay on both sides of the ‘road’.
Halfway down the track it was same-again-Sam and after more tricky reversing and folding-in of mirrors we finally got a clear run and found our boat.
As to the boat trip, the pictures speak for themselves. It really was marvellous.
Part way along we stopped on a river bank where we unexpectedly were able to acquire battered and fried sweet potato and pumpkin on a skewer, while Alice had tiny crabs which were battered, fried and then coated in chilli sauce. For 2 yuan each. It was very tasty but once the boat started up again eating afternoon tea with one had was really beginning to impede my ability to focus the camera. So I started turning the camera lens up or lens down to get it to slide down through the focal length, and so doing managed to take some pictures one-handed as we went past some people playing hackeysack or whatever on the beach.
I managed to spot two or maybe three of the horsemen, but there should be a picture down below for you to play along at home. If there isn’t then please resist the urge to email me and tell me about it.
While we were away our van driver had been playing cards, and Lilian let us know that he had won 60 yuan and might be driving a bit more patiently now. But no – he was obviously in a rush to get back to town and spend it. Everyone assembled themselves more or less by coincidence in the lobby and attempted to pick a restaurant; this took ages because one was too big, too small, too chinese, too western, too expensive, or somebody had already been there for lunch. But we did manage to acquire dinner eventually, and have a great time sitting around the table spinning food clockwise or counter.
The people that tried to go out after dinner returned to the hotel not long after, and not full of praise for the local ‘scene.’ The karaoke is said to be ‘awful’.
P.S Does anyone read this far down or do you guys just look at the pictures?
Greg
