This is a Lovely-BU YAO!!

There has been one travel destination that has eluded Melissa and me for the longest time. It seemed as though everybody we know has been there, and the Lonely Planet book called it a must-see! What is this place? A mountainous town in northern Guangxi province called Yangshuo!

Our students were testing Monday - Wednesday, which meant that we did not have to teach or anything for five days including the weekend. So we booked an overnight train to Guilin (the jumping-off point for Yangshuo) and packed our crap! We only managed to get hard-seat tickets, so the twelve hour train ride was a nightmare. Hard-seats are booths of two facing hard benches that fit three people each. In the middle is a tiny table connected to the wall, but this addition doesn't provide any extra leg room. Melissa claimed to not be able to sleep, so she spent most of her time trying to get me to sleep (AWWWWW!!!!).

We arrived in Guilin before 6:00am, and were almost immediately intercepted by touts. These touts were trying to lead us to hotels or restaurants, but we found that the touts just kept on coming, no matter where we were. We got to Yangshuo fairly early in the morning by bus and had the unpleasant task of walking the tout-gauntlet to find a decent hostel. In addition to the things listed before, they were trying to push bamboo river cruises, flutes of various make, postcards, books, bike excursions, t-shirts, and more.

The touts were everywhere, but it was easy enough (although infinitely annoying) to dismiss them by saying, "xie xie, bu yao," which roughly means 'no thanks.' However, we ran into one tout who would not leave us alone as we tried to absorb the riverside view. She was followed us over to the esplanade area, casually stood beside us as if she too were taking in the marvellous view and began to hawk her bamboo river cruise. We declined, but she would not go away. It was as though as long as we were there, she would continue her sales pitch. It was SO ANNOYING! Just look at the above picture!

So, the touts almost spoiled the trip for me, but I don't want to sound like too much of a Grumpy Gus! We did soak in some of the better activities, which I will tell about in another post. In all, I'm just glad that we got to cross off the trip from our to-do list.

Cullen