yangshuo part t w o

October 02, 2014 - lazy dayz

our lazy day. I don't think I even left the hostel until just before dinner time. It was was nice to just relax, and not have anywhere to be. We all went out with the goal of getting some souvenir shopping done.

I was carrying my little satchel looking purse, because it was small and convenient. I bought something for my dad, and then forgot to zip it back up after putting my wallet back inside. smooth move kale. Since I didn't have anything to hold my stuff, kenz let me put it in her backpack, so I did. Then I walked literally like 15-20 feet to buy my little sisters some tea sets. I bargained a bit and when I reached in to get my wallet to pay, it was gone. You know that giant knot you get in your stomach when something bad happens? Imagine that times a hundred and that's what I was feeling. 

I said a few swear words and then retraced my steps in my head. I thought back to putting some of my things in kenz's bag. I asked everyone I could see where she was and spotted her in the same place I had left her. Without even telling her what was going on, I frantically unzipped her bag and searched through it. No wallet. Courtney tried to keep me calm and said maybe I had dropped it or set it down somewhere. I walked up and down the street, crying, praying its bright colors would stand out, but they didn't. I accepted the fact that it was gone. My cute wallet from target, $160, my bank card, my debut card, and our room key that was $9 to replace. But not my passport, or my drivers license. 

Now, you may be thinking to yourself  why I was dumb enough to carry all of my money together in one place, am I correct? Well.. I felt it was safer to have it with me, knowing where it was, rather than leaving it in the hostel where someone could check into our room, (there was an empty bed) and have it stolen that way. Turns out that was the wrong decision. But, oh well. I'd like to think that whoever took it, needed that $160 a lot more than I did. 

That night, we went to dinner with courtney's "friend" she had met the day before. Although it felt like the rest of us were third-wheeling it while she was on a date. lolz. It was entertaining, but the food was awful, and expensive.

October 03, 2014 - snoring men & fields of rice

To top off my bad day, at 4 am I was woken up by our new roommate making his way into the bed above mine as loud as he possibly could. It was apparent he was about as drunk as it gets, and within two minutes of entering the room, he was instantly asleep, and instantly snoring. 

If you think your husband/boyfriend/whoever snores loud, you have NO idea. It was the most awful noise I have ever heard. It was like a mix of a dying cow and a drowning elephant. And it was so loud that even after getting headphones and turning up my music as loud as it would go, I could still hear the dude. It woke up courtney and brooke, too. And none of us ever made it back to sleep because we had to be up at 6 to go to the rice fields. Note to self: take ear plugs next time.

The bus ride to the rice fields was about 5 hours. There was no leg room and I got a freaking migraine due to my lack of sleep. By the time we got to the rice fields we only had 2 and a half hours. But we were starving so we stopped and ate some fried rice. It tasted good. But it did not sit well with my stomach. Especially after walking up hundreds of stairs to get to the top of the rice fields.

They were pretty, but I'm still not convinced it was worth the time and money spent. The bus ride home was pretty awful too. The traffic was so bad that instead of it taking 5 hours, it took 7.

October 04, 2014 - stranded 

Some of us wanted to go river rafting but there were two to a raft, and we had an odd number, so we decided to just rent the mopeds again instead, since we had had so much fun on them the first time.

We drove all around yangshuo, through the city, through the mountains, and we even went off-roading for a minute, which was terrifying. 

Courtney and brooke left early to go do cooking class so the rest of us kept riding and then ended up going swimming in the Li River, which was a m a z i n g. But there was a sign that said "for the safety of your life, do not swim here." buuut there were other people swimming so we decided it was okay. 

Afterwards, we decided to go ride the mopeds until our time was all the way up. We stopped in this random corn field to take pictures and Dak wanted me to get her dress. I put the key in the seat to open it but then it wouldn't come out. We were stranded. But then a cute little family of four came riding past us on their moped and they stopped to help us, bless their hearts. A few other people stopped too, but it was no use. We called the hostel and they sent a mechanic to fix the issue. It took forever, and in the process, kenz pooped her pants - well, her swimsuit. Her one piece swimsuit. Oh kenz. 

The moped I was driving didn't have a headlight either, so that was fun trying to make it back without driving off a cliff or into a river. But we did make it back alive.

October 05, 2014 - shop til you drop

We spent literally the entire day getting souvenirs and walking down the streets. For some reason we all thought we weren't leaving until the 7th. But then someone brought it up and we realized we had to head home the next day. Sigh. Yangshuo was a dream come true and we were all sad to be leaving.. Especially knowing that on this 24-hour train ride, we would have no beds, because they were sold out.

October 06, 2014 - H e l l

We woke up at 3 am so we could head back to Guilin and make our 6 am train. We somehow fit all of us, AND all of our luggage in this tiny ghetto van. Our driver took some sketchy shortcut and for a minute or two I thought he was kidnapping us. But we made it to the train station.

When we got on the train, there were people sitting in our seats. In China, it's normal for people to buy STANDING in how's that there will be an open seat  because it's cheaper that way. But with the holidays, most of those people ended up standing the majority of the time. Sucks to suck. But seriously they would hover over you. The last 6 hours, this homeless looking - and smelling - lady was practically sitting on me. It was awful. The seats were back to back so you couldn't recline them, and it was just super uncomfortable. NEVER again. 

I miss yangshuo, but I don't miss that awful, smelly, train.

aaand now back to teaching my cute little demons. 

xoxo kale salad

yangshuo part o n e

Yangshuo was honestly one of the prettiest, funnest, most incredible places I have ever been. There's so much to do there and it is soooo beautiful. I mean just look at it!

September 28, 2014 - 24 hours

I woke up to kenz and madi standing over me at 4:30 am. "kale. kale salad? (my nickname). Are you awake? It's time to go." running off of two hours of sleep, I jumped out of bed and put on some clothes. We were out the door by 5, and made it to the train station just in time. Lucky for us, we managed to get a sleeper train for the 24 hour commute there. It really wasn't so bad. Well.. other than the fact that i was on the top bunk, which was pretty high up, and I couldn't sit up straight without hitting my head on the ceiling. Needless to say, we made it to guilin.

September 29, 2014 - hustled

The train ride lasted 24 hours exactly. After hauling our suitcases up and down several flights of stairs, dripping with sweat, we made it out of the train station. Almost immediately we were swarmed with Chinese people saying "yangshuo?" as they pointed to a bunch of buses. One guy, who looked nice enough, started taking our bags and putting them on one of the buses. Then he charged us 40 RMB ($8) to ride the bus. He was supposedly the bus driver. 

But once we started driving, we realized that same dude standing in the road counting the money we had just forked over. Sickkkk. We got hustled. But it's okay because we still made it to yangshuo and we still had an unforgettable time. The bus ride from Guilin to Yangshuo was 1-2 hours and it was probably one of the prettiest drives of my life. 

After cramming onto a city bus, getting a little lost, and walking for quite some time, we made it to our hostel, Monkey Jane. It was in the most convenient location, too. All we had to do was walk downstairs, down the alley, and we were in the middle of the most adorable little street with shops along the whole thing. 

After we settled into our hostel and took showers, we explored, took some pictures, and then hung out on Monkey Jane's roof, which was the only place the wifi would work.

September 30, 2014 - stranger danger 

After having a lazy morning, we headed back to Guilin to float down the Li River on bamboo rafts, which would take us back to Yangshuo. But when we got there, we were informed that it was too late to do it :/ sooo we wandered around Guilin, and ended up paying some dudes to take us on a fake bamboo raft around some island or something. It was suuuuper sketchy. But it turned out to be super pretty and we got some cool pictures. 

Afterwards, we crossed this bridge. But it looked more like someone threw down some ropes and then some wood on top of it. Picture the bridge Shrek has to cross to save process fiona from the dragon. It was super sketchy. If you haven't already realized it yet, a lot of things in China are pretty sketchy.

After taking the bus back to Yangshuo, five of us were starving and in search of some yummy, cheap food. Around 1 am, we found this guy who was making noodles so we decided to give them a shot. They were  d e l i c i o u s. While we were waiting for them to be cooked, some guy offered us beers. We explained that we didn't drink, but I'm not sure he understood because when we sat down to eat, he offered them to us again. We figured out how to say "we don't drink alcohol" in Chinese and he replied "coca cola?" one of us said yes, and he proceeded to count us, and then went to the convenient store that was 30 feet away and bought us all cokes. What a sweetie! 

We invited him to eat with us and then ended up inviting another dude to do the same because he was eating all by himself. He spoke fairly good English, so it was fun to just sit and talk to him while the other dude pretended he knew what was going on. We stayed out there until 2 or 2:30 and then decided we should probably go to sleep. It was definitely a night I'll remember for the rest of my life! 

October 01, 2014 - the best day

We decided to rent mopeds for the day so we could go do the mud caves and see some other parts of yangshuo. At first, the people who were renting them to us wouldn't let us go, because we were all apparently pretty bad at driving, and the roads were busier than ever due to the holiday. But after a bit of practice, they gave us the okay and we were off. 

I can't even describe to you the thrill of zooming through the mountains in yangshuo on a little scooter. It was so incredibly beautiful and so fun! 

Our first stop was the dragon bridge. supposedly. It wasn't as cool as it was talked up to be, but we did get some good pictures and some flower crowns for 5 RMB that didn't even fit our heads.

After that, we found a place with the bamboo rafts that we had gone to Guilin to do. It was so incredible. We had this adorable little chinese man who rowed us  (is that what you call it?) down the river. By far one of my favorite things I've done in China thus far.

Our last stop waaaas the mud caves. What an experience that was. I'm 80% sure most of, if not all of it was man-made. But it was still cool. We had a tour guide who actually spoke English. We saw some neat stuff in the caves, but we all just wanted to get to the mud! Eventually, we did get there. It was sooo cold. Since we didn't want to risk losing our phones, we had way of taking pictures other than the photographer who was there. So we ended up getting a few of those. I think we lasted about 20 minutes in the mud, and then we were all ready to get out and get cleaned up. 

Sadly, the showers to rinse off were cold too. So that was pretty awful. But the next room had hot springs, which was real nice. It was like soaking in a hot bath, which is my favorite thing ever. 

After sitting in the hot springs for a long time, we realized it was 5:45, and we were supposed to have the mopeds back by 7. 

On the way back, half of us got split up from the other half, which was no bueno.  I was the one driving on the way back while Sonya was on the back getting to figure out where the freak to go. Driving through that traffic, on a scooter, with a gimpy helmet, and having no idea where I was going.. was probably one of the most nerve-wracking things I've ever experienced. BUT, somehow, we made it back safe and sound. Thank goodness. What a day.