Alright, so our flight to Guilin went smoothly. It was only 2 hours and they served us a full box meal, strange. There was also a screaming baby on the plane which made the flight seem longer than it really was... haha, don't get me wrong, I adore babies, just not when they're screaming on a plane, kinda stresses me out!! Anyways... we got to Guilin right before dark and caught a bus that took us right to Yangshuo, which was another hour and a half of traveling. The drivers in both of these towns are absolutely ridiculous!!! I guess they are the craziest drivers in all of China and I could see why! I've never felt so unsafe on a bus in my entire life! The yellow line is invisible to them because they seem to choose what side of the road they drive on anyways, regardless. To top it all off, there are also tons of people, bicycles and mopeds all added into the mix... not pretty! I have never heard so much honking and seen so much chaos ever!!! I have a feeling that India is going to be so much worse than this too... lovely. Once we arrived safely in Yangshuo, it was nothing like I had envisioned... I didn't know that it was going to be full of food vendors and shops on both sides of a main strip street... thought it was going to be more rural, but we also arrived at night so couldn't see any of the limestone peaks that Yangshuo is famous for. We happened to get dropped off right near the hostel where we wanted to stay at, Flowers Youth Hostel. Btw, such a cool place!!! So we checked in, and got settled in slowly... we had a lot of issues haha! Ok so there's a group of 7 of us (Me, Gabe, Brittany, Mike, Laura, Abby and Jenna) and half of the keys that were given to us broke in the lock in the doors, our toilet seat broke and our room's light didn't work, so we had to get this repairman to fix it lol. AND we're on the 6th floor, so lucky us we get to have a work out every time we go to and leave the room. Also we have the most rickety bunk beds I've ever been in... all night I was worried that my bed was gonna cave in (I was on one of the top ones). After all that mess we finally went to find food. The 2 boys we were with split off to eat some of the local vendor food, they were feeling adventurous I guess, while us 5 girls found a little local sit-down restaurant. Well, first none of the menu was in English and what Laura and I ordered was questionable. We got some kind of pork first which wasn't that bad, but the second thing we ordered was so awful it made us sick to our stomachs! My stomach wasn't feeling the greatest for the rest of the night after that. I don't think I've ever craved American food so much in my entire life!!! We were all pretty tired from the day's worth of traveling so we decided to just chill at the hostel and went to bed early.
This morning everyone wanted to wake up at 6:45 in the morning to get a good head start on the day... that never happened!!! I was up early and Skyped Anders for a little bit, was happy about that! We didn't end up leaving the hostel until after 9:30 in the morning. We rented bikes for the day for only 20 RMB, which is only like $3... so cheap. We were lucky because the weather was AWESOME! Sunny, and breezy, not too cold. It was the most gorgeous bike ride I've ever been on... my butt hurts so much though, because we rode around for a good 4 hours or so, plus the bike wasn't the greatest bike, or most comfortable bike I've ever been on. It was so worth it though!!! Riding through the countryside was phenomenal... seeing the limestone peaks surrounding us, fields after fields and small remote villages... ah, it was great!!! Words can't describe... for some reason Blogspot doesn't work in China, neither does Facebook, so I won't be able to post any pictures up this time around until later unfortunately. We pretty much just biked out of town into the "sticks" and turned off down random dirt roads that led into villages full of curious people who said hi to us as we passed them... got to hang out with a few kids our age for a bit as we watched them wash their clothes in the river... so neat. After we found a wide open field surrounded by towering rocky peaks, which we attempted to climb and just enjoyed the view. It was just so incredible...
A few of us decided to head back after bumping into an interesting looking cemetery where we lied in the grass for a little bit. After returning our bikes, I bought a few more souvenirs and gifts and ran into a local who spoke English who works for a bamboo rafting company, so we might look into it for tomorrow. He also gave us Chinese names, forget how to spell it though lol. Laura and I bought our bus tickets to Chenzen which will lead us to Hong Kong, Sunday night into Monday morning (a sleeper bus). Now we're all back at the hostel, cleaning up, drinking wine and eating dinner, and seeing where the night may lead us! :) Probably going to check out this light show tomorrow night, which is supposed to be the biggest in the world... so glad we changed our plans to come here!!!
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