But it’s true. You never forget. Or almost never, anyway.
One of my colleagues told me a story of her first days at college, when she
opted for a bike and totally forgot, crashing big time on campus.
But I guess that’s not normal. Most people don’t forget,
including myself and my traveling companion from the past weekend.
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| Didn't seem too safe, but was gorgeous. |
Finally, I ventured within China,
taking a one-hour flight to this place called Guilin and neighboring Yangshuo. I’ve
absolutely no idea of the history or anything like that, but it was an easy
getaway, and one my traveling companion had tried to make twice before without
success. She wanted to go, and I agreed to join her.
After some scheduling issues, we both wound up on the same
flight and got there with few hitches. Upon arrival, though – another hitch.
The hostel I’d reserved in the neighboring city was supposed to send a cab for
us, and when we walked out of baggage claim, there was not a guy holding up a
sign with my name. And of course, I’d written down the hotel address, but not
the phone number.
So Traveling Companion, who had wanted to visit Guilin more
than Yangshuo anyway, talked to the tourist people in the airport and arranged
for us to hire a car and driver for the day for about the cost of the cab I’d
tried to hired, then would deposit us at the bus station, where cheap buses ran
every 20 minutes or so.
It helped very much that TC speaks extremely good Chinese.
She is American, but her parents were from Vietnam, and she could blend in a
lot more easily than me. In fact, on at least three occasions people asked if
she was my tour guide, which both of us found to be a little offensive. Another
time, someone complimented her on her “extremely good English.” Uh, TC is from
DC. English is her native language.
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| Don't stop, TC! |
But her excellent Chinese helped me a lot, and it solidified
that I am just not about to venture into China alone. I’m not equipped to do
it. I’m now looking at a package tour that another colleague did with his
family and am thinking that’s the way to go. It goes to Beijing,
X’ian, Shanghai and Chengdu, which is pretty much what I want to
see. There’s another western city I’d also like to visit, but that’d be a
fairly distant No. 5 on the list, so I’m OK if I can’t get to that one.
Another thing I learned this trip, though, is that I really
am used to traveling alone. It’s a lot easier to plan for what only you want to
do. I had a good time on the trip, but did do some things that weren’t on my
list and weren’t all that impressive but were kinda pricey.
Or just hokey. One thing that looked good on paper was a
“cave.” We paid something like $15 to see stalactites and stalagmites and I
swear it was completely fake. Don’t get me wrong; it was a nice replica but was
being sold as the real thing. Caves generally aren’t formed with stamped
concrete flooring or have impressive lighting features installed.
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| Fake but cool. This one was called "Palm Tree" |
That one was a little cheaper about the two others we did
that day, but we discovered the reason: they took several opportunities to hawk
merchandise. Like hard core selling. I was immune to it, as everything was
conducted in Chinese, but TC had to deal with it. I just feigned total
ignorance, even though I really did know what was going on.
Really, in all that we did, they took those digital photos
and tried to pressure us (meaning everyone, not just the Americans) to buy
them. And I’m just not interested.
The second day, in Yangshuo, our bamboo raft driver guy was
the worst. I never really talk about where I’m from or what I do, but I guess
TC answered the “where are you from thing” (after explaining that she wasn’t my
tour guide) and the guy, according to her interpretation, just started in on if
our car driver had told us “the rules.” She said he went on to lecture her that
we were obligated to tip him, and that of the 180 RMB ($30) we’d given for the
one-hour raft, he only saw about $5 of it. He also told her that we had to buy
the photos that they took. He pushed the raft up to the little hut where they
were hawking and practically pushed us out of the chairs to view them. He was
pissed that we didn’t, and even more pissed that we didn’t at the second stop,
either. But he didn’t even try on the third – seriously, they hawked these
things three times during a one-hour thing.
That one upset TC far more than it did me, but then, I
didn’t have to hear it in a language that I could understand. He went on and on
and she just muttering that she wished he’d shut up. Eventually he did and I
thought the scenery was just gorgeous, but I don’t know that she enjoyed it at
all. She kept mentioning how the guy ruined her vacation. I blew it off.
She did, however, like the little toboggan thing. This was
the quick way down from a mountain. You go up a cable car – a cable car that
does not seem very steady, let me tell you. But it’s really pretty. We got
about a quarter of the way up and I started hearing these clack-clack-clack sounds
and couldn’t figure it out until we crossed over what looked like a metal log
flume without water.
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| It was "pretty deep." |
Halfway up the cable car, there was a platform and people
who were coming down were getting off. I saw off to the side it was the start
of the toboggan ride. We continued up the mountain on the little cable car
thing, explored up there (there wasn’t much, but great views) and came down.
The little cable car cab thing did not stop, which freaked
TC out. I didn’t see the big deal (how could it stop, anyway?) to just jump out
of the way, but TC didn’t quite understand it. She did do better getting off on
the way down, but she might have jumped off in her hurry to get on the
toboggan, and really, who could blame her? It was SO cool. Like, I want to join
the Olympic team. It was SO much fun.
They were one-seaters and for some reason – probably because
we were American – we had to follow a guy in front and pace ourselves. We
weren’t allowed to go full throttle. TC went next and I followed. It was just a
lot of fun. We both got off and wanted to go again, but not for the price. Even
on the flight back, we were still talking about that. I’d have paid for a
two-hour pass or something and just gone up and down as much as I could. It
was, by far, the highlight because it was so much fun.
We did a couple of other things on her list and then headed
out to Yangshuo. The next morning, we did the bamboo rafting with the extortion
guy and I finally got some good pictures. They key to that, of course, is
remembering to bring your camera as well as the batteries but also remember to
charge them. I got it right this time, which was good because it really is just
gorgeous.
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| View from the raft |
I love tropical foliage. This time, it wasn’t even just
flowers, but just green. At one of the places, there was a group of trees and
all had ferns growing all over them. They looked like hairy trees. There was
also a banyan tree that was purported to be 1,000 years old. It was quite huge.
We ran into that one as we were biking to Moon Hill. Yep,
biking. TC was terrified. She said the only two other times she’d biked in
China she’d almost been killed, and Lord, looking at the traffic in Yangshuo, I
was kind of worried about it myself.
Even though the city isn’t all that large, traffic is
dangerous because there really aren’t rules. You can be on a two-lane road and
be in a vehicle that is passing a vehicle that is passing a vehicle. A car
flashing its lights means “Move, now!” and a blast from the horn usually means
“OK, I’m passing you now; fair warning.” Big trucks, tour buses, cars,
motorcycle, scooters, bikes and pedestrians are all in their own kind of
patterns, and those don’t always include going in the direction you’d normally
think of as being legal.
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| 1,000 year-old Banyan tree |
It’s sort of terrifying, especially when roundabouts are
concerned. And TC and I were on these decrepit bikes, but we both eventually
emerged unscathed, if a bit filthy. I almost bit it once, when I was trying to
pull over and make sure TC was still with me. I was going a bit faster than I
thought and almost crashed into the curb, which would have most certainly left
me with a visit to a hospital, but it worked out OK.
Give me the motorcycle with someone else driving any day,
though. It’s much easier to sit back and ride than it is to make the decisions:
Does that car see me? Is it going to pull out? Why is that scooter headed
directly toward me? Oh, gosh, a huge rock pile in my lane while a rickshaw, a
scooter, a car and a bus are all passing me at the same time. Can I risk moving
over 18 inches and trust that they will shift, too, even if them shifting is
going to be in the path of that oncoming tour bus?
So while the bike ride wasn’t what I would classify as
relaxing, it was a good way to get around for about 3-4 hours and see some
stuff. I think the Moon Rock place was 13 kilometers from the city, and we were
staying a bit on the other side of it, so we got in a workout. By the time we
got to Moon Rock, though, we were done and ready to turn around. We didn’t even
pay to go into that park. We went in and I snapped a photo and we just kind of
looked at each other said decided that was enough for the day.
Heading back into town wasn’t near as hard for some reason,
but it was still harrowing to maneuver through the city. We broke up the ride
home with dinner, though.
Yangshuo and Guilin
are known for rice noodles, or some variation thereof. When we landed in Guilin,, we were hungry
and asked the driver to stop and let us grab something to eat, and he took us
to this place where we both got a dish of rice noodles. It was quite good, so
before we left for Yangshuo, we asked him to let us grab another bite before
taking us to the bus station. Rice noodles again. Very good, and quite a
bargain at about .50 a bowl.
But when we left on Sunday morning for the bamboo rafting
and asked our different driver to stop and let us grab some breakfast and he
took us to another place where we got rice noodles, we felt that was enough and
on the way back from the bike ride we got something different. (Beef, fried rice
and some kind of green thing I’ve had before that’s really good but I don’t
know what it is.)
And on the way to the airport, we were transferring from the
taxi to the bus and decided to grab a bite, we wound up in front of a rice
noodle place. Ate five meals while on vacation, and four of them were
identical. Those four meals totaled about $3.50, though, so there’s that.
And they were good.
Next weekend is Hanoi.
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