Guilin and Yangshuo (and Pinxiang), China: January 11-15

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the train station in Shenzhen to set off for Guilin. It was PACKED. Public transportation is always crazy, but it's especially ridiculous during the New Year. The Chinese say (help me D) "ren ai ren shan-" people mountain, people sea, meaning "there's a crapload of people in here."
We got on our sleeper train to make the 14ish hour trip from Shenzhen to Guilin. Here are D and Phong with our bag of snacks. EVERYONE on the train brought a large bowl of instant noodles. There was a hot water spigot on the train.

You can see the corners of some beds (there were 3 on each side- six total in each "compartment") and the folding chairs in the hall.


We got to Guilin REALLY early in the morning. It was beautiful and COLDDDD. The cab driver had no idea where our hostel was, nor where the GIANT Sheraton around the corner might be. Dude, seriously.

Breakfast= rice noodle dumpling things with lettuce and soy sauce= delicious. Danielle was great about reading the menu and finding something vegetarian for me at every meal in China. I would have starved without her!

In Shenzhen, women exercise with fans ("fanercise) in the park. In Guilin, they use some kind of Nerf Tennis-like equipment. It looks pretty cool, and probably pretty hard.

Jasmine tea on the grounds of the JingJiang Palace. Mmmm.

Gate in the park, before we climbed that mountain on the left there.

On top of the mountain!

View from the top:

The Twin Pagodas in Guilin

We decided to take a scenic cruise up the Li River. It was gorgeous, but FREEZING! Here we are, being cold like gangstas.

We saw this view (more and less sunny) for three hours: breathtaking.

The town of Yangshuo: small, touristy, pretty.

We rented mopeds so we could see some of the little villages surrounding Yangshuo. So much fun, as you can see from D's expression:

View from a bridge we tried to cross on mopeds, but couldn't:

A little village. The three people I travelled with all speak Chinese, so they were able to talk to the villagers and ask directions and such. It was really cool!

Doesn't this look like Motorcycle Diaries: China?

Food market in Yanshuo. We came here with our cooking teacher to get some ingredients for our delicious meals!

Top Chefs ready for cooking class:

Yangshuo

After dinner, we took a boat ride on the river to see the Cormorant Fishermen. The fishermen follow the birds in a boat, and when a bird catches a fish, it comes to the boat and the fishermen squeezes the fish out into a bucket. Seems sort of mean, but I guess the birds get to eat some of the fish. After we saw them at work, we each got to hold a cormorant:

We bussed from Yangshuo back to Guilin, then trained from Guilin to Pinxiang, the town closest to the China-Vietnam border. We took a covered wagon from the train station to the bus station. On the train, Ben had befriended a really nice Pinxiang native, who helped us out with ticket buying and finding lunch. Unfortunately, we were unaware of the Law of Nature #45129.1: It is physically impossible to ride in a covered wagon and an airplane in the same day. I'm positive it was this little guy that made us miss our flight from Hanoi to Hue, Vietnam that evening.

Here's the border crossing between China and Vietnam. The building is huge, but for some reason there were only two people on duty, and it took us about an hour to get through.

In one day, we rode a bus, a train, a bus, a covered wagon, a bus, this mini trolley thing, another bus, and a taxi. There was supposed to be a plane after that, but unfortunately it just didn't happen.

To be continued again...