Budget: 450 Yuan/$75; Spent: 665 Yuan/$110.83
Jeff here.
I am writing this blog from a room so far beyond anything that we’re used to that it almost brings me to tears. From our balcony, we have a view of moon hill, which is a very cool rock formation on the karst landscape that, you guessed it, looks like a moon. This is from our balcony (moon hill is on the left, Patty is on the right):
While only $40, this hotel feels like a palace. We have our own room, queen-size bed, rain shower, balcony, free coffee in our room (!!!!!!!)…I’m even wearing slippers right now. Tomorrow we will be having coffees at sunrise on our balcony. This is a dream.
Anyway, back to harsh, harsh reality. The train ride from Kunming to Guilin was less than pleasant for me. Not because of anything in particular on the train itself, but just because I couldn’t sleep. I had had terrible allergies the day before - sneezing, running nose, eyes watering - and I think that had something to do with it. Thankfully I have my allergy medications with me, so those helped a lot!
The train ride was 19 hours long, which sounds like a really really really really long time, but it already seems like a blur. Besides not being able to sleep, our waking time was well spent. We looked into our Southeast Asia Lonely Planet book and checked out all the amazing things that we’ll be seeing when we head there. We are considering adding Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines to our destinations. Very exciting!!
After our train ride, we arrived in Guilin without really knowing what to do. Unfortunately we got dropped off at the train station that is nowhere near the city centre, where the bus station is. At first, both Patty and I just wanted to take a taxi, but we ended finding our way to a bus stop and thankfully there were route maps with stops written in English. We climbed aboard a bus we thought would take us to the bus depot and the driver seemed to nod his head in agreement when we showed him the Chinese characters in our book. Anyway, we were a little nervous while riding the bus, but it was all for nothing, as we were delivered nearly in front of the bus depot.
As soon as we hopped off the bus, we had some people calling out to us “Hello! Yangshuo!” Of course, Yangshuo is where we were heading, like most of the people that look like tourists. We just ignored them and walked into the bus depot. After a short ‘conversation’ with some younger Chinese girls about whether we could buy our tickets at this place, we got in line, bought our tickets, and ran to our bus that was leaving only four minutes later.
The 1.5-hour bus ride to Yangshuo was fairly uneventful. If you’ve never heard of a Karst landscape, I suggest you look it up now. The views from our bus were stunning, though we were both too tired to truly appreciate them for long. Plus, we figured, we had four days to see them upon arrival!
Once we arrived in Yangshuo, we then had to take another bus to our hostel. We had a taxi driver following us around trying to get us to come with him. He was pretty persistent and it took a while to shake him off. Patty was determined to not take a taxi and it turned out that it only took speaking to one person to find our bus and it was leaving right away. We then got onto a bus with the craziest bus driver of all time. At first, the ride was slow because there was a lady hanging out the door yelling out to people where the bus was headed. But once the bus was full, the ride really began. Seriously, the driver used his horn more than not. We were flying by cars, busses, motorcycles…he was nuts. I never really felt unsafe, and maybe everyone else drives really slow here because of all the tourism, I dunno.
We actually were told where to hop off the bus. That was nice. And it was only a five minute walk until Patty spotted our hotel. It’s in a tiny village that’s probably just been set up because it’s in the view of Moon Hill. When we entered our hotel, we were actually treated like real human beings. We were told to sit down. They brought us cookies and some ginger and honey tea. The girl at the front counter spoke excellent English and we truly felt welcome. Oh, to feel real customer service again! It was wonderful.
It was at this point that Patty got the idea that we stay another night here. For me, changing plans is an incredibly (and irrationally) stressful concept, so it a little time. But by the time we had seen our room and the view, and considered the fact that we had just spent the last 24 hours traveling (!!!), it was a must. The receptionist actually called our hostel and cancelled the following night for us so that we could stay another night. We lost a $1.70 deposit on the room. I think it was worth it.
After washing several layers of grime off our bodies in a wonderful shower (did I mention a rain shower?), we headed for dinner. We decided to treat ourselves to the Italian restaurant on the roof of the hotel called Luna. And boy did we treat ourselves. We started with a Mediterranean-style salad, calamari, and a mushroom soup. This was followed by a sausage, chicken, and potato dish, as well as a shrimp and zucchini pasta. Both were amazing. We topped it all off with a plate of fruit and a brownie with ice cream. Oh ya, and we ordered a bottle of white vino to go with the meal. That was the meal of the trip, so far.
Tomorrow, it’s off to get a closer look at Moon Hill, as well as some caves where we can apparently take mud baths!
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