Guilin to Yangshuo: the comical river cruise

We stepped off the train in Guilin around 9:00 am the next morning. We didn't plan on spending much time in Guilin, as much of the things to see and do in the area were based around Yangshuo. We thought it would be a cool idea to take a river cruise down to Yangshuo instead of taking a coach because we thought it would be more scenic and more fun. We found a ticket booth outside of the train station and I talked to the man in Chinese trying to figure out times and types of boats. We decided to take a smaller boat straight to Xingping (the small fishing village where we were staying ) to save us some time.

There are many instances in China where I wish I was fluent in Chinese and this was one of them. The ticket man escorted us to the side of the road and flagged down a coach and prompted us to quickly get on. The bus took us to a museum, parked. the bus driver pointed at a different bus and told me to get onto it. I tried to ask him why but I couldn't understand his answer so I just trusted that we would somehow make it on the river. We got on the empty bus and waited for the Cinese tourists and guide to be finished in the museum. When they were finished they hopped on the bus and I kid you not the woman picked up the coach microphone and talked in super fast Chinese for 20 minutes straight as we drove to the boat pier. It was so annoying and to be honest, I don't know how she did it as she didn't even take a break to breathe! I could only make out that she kept going on and on about Guilin rice noodles which I assumed were something special and then she moved on to talking about beer fish. Other than that I had no idea what she was talking about as she spoke way too fast for me to keep up and it was soooo hard to ignore her because like every other a chinese person, she seemed to think that even though she had a microphone she still needed to shout.

20 minutes later the bus stopped ad we could see that we were at the boat dock. The tour guide told us to go have lunch and meet back in a little bit.we were so happy to not have to listen to err anymore and prayed to God that she wouldn't be on our boat down the river or the peacefulness and serenity would be destroyed.

We were ecstatic when we were led onto a boat. Due to the mass confusion and bus switches we were scared we would never make it and we set out for Xingping down the river on a small motorized bamboo raft. The scenery was stunning! It was a bit foggy but cool because around every river bend more magnificent karats would appear in front of us. It was almost magical. As we boated along, the boat driver would point out different scenic spots to us and it was quite the challenge to try and figure out what she was saying and translate it for Nathan. Half way through our cruise we pulled up to another boat and the lady instructed us to switch boats. We were a bit confused but this is china and you just gotta trust that you will get where you need to go. We hopped onto the new boat and continued down the river. A little while later we were pulling into the port of a village and the man on the boat ushered us off and to a mini shuttle that would take us to Xingping. We whizzed through a small fishing village and pasts fields of fruit and even had to dodge a herd of goats on the way but we made it to Xingping!

It was a really cool way to travel to Xingping and definitely a lot more scenic than the coach that we could have taken instead. It was very neat to see that mountains from the river instead of from land. We checked into our hostel and had a little power nap before heading across the street from our hostel and up 12,000 steps that literally shot straight up to the top of a karst. It only took us 20 minutes to reach the top and man were we panting but the view was absurdly spectacular. On the top was a pavilion and looking out below we had a beautiful view of Xingping, the river, the mountains and a few other fishing towns scattered along the river banks. It was absolutely stunning! After soaking up the view that we worked so hard to see, we headed back down and got ready to head into Yangshuo to meet up with a few TTC friends and have some drinks.

We went to a really cool rooftop bar called Monkey Janes and drank beer and unfortunately had a few shots of Baijiu. It was a great first day in the Yangshuo area and the perfect start to what ended up being my favorite days of our trip!