The fact that I am writing this blog entry nearly a week later on a sunny morning in a park in Hong Kong should give you enough indication that I've had a fairly busy time up until now. So, where did I leave off?
The trip to Yangshuo was an early morning affair, the train pulling into Guilin at around 5:30am and our private minibus taking us the rest of the way, arriving before 7am. Yangshuo is drop-dead gorgeous and relatively teeming with westerners, which like our breakfast was a little disappointing. Up to this point I'd enjoyed the locals gawking at us, and us having to communicate through signs and weird charade-style gestures, but not here. Yangshuo recently discovered it's actually quite a nice place, and with it comes full English translations, fusion chinese-western restaurants and high prices.
After randomly meeting a holidaying chinese girl called Aimili, I went off for a disappointing pizza with the others - disappointing because the meals slowly arrived when they were ready, as per Chinese tradition - then we went off for a cruise of the river Li in the dying hours of the sunset. It was beautiful, serene and only tainted by the millions of people trying to sell us things. Still, the landscape around here is awe-inspiring and I'd gladly go back for a few days with more cash!
We went out again and found a nice place serving cheap beer before moving on to a bar with dance music, a skimpily dressed karaoke singer and a male pole dancer. We stayed for one expensive drink and quickly removed ourselves.
The next day was my favourite: hiring bikes in the morning, lazily cycling to Moon Peak and nearly killing myself running up a second peak. The views of the area were beautiful, though I wish I'd gone off the beaten track and climbed higher as Max did. I then signed up with Harriet to watch the cormorant fishing, which was cool, and then we got offered to go to see the infamous light show at a quarter of the normal price. This involved paying up front, getting dropped on a riverbank and being dumped in someone's three-wheeler taxi, paying off a person guarding some entrance and being deposited in their back garden on the opposite bank of the river. "Seeing the light show" was possibly a bit oversold as we were quite some distance away, but on balance the price was about right. Even if we had to wait with growing unease for another 20 minutes for a boat that didn't appear on the riverbank (possibly due to obvious police presence). We eventually got back the way we came and had to hurry to apologise to Katherine (who was waiting for Harriet) and the others.
We weren't finished there. Max and I were joined by Harriet in the search for a good but of nightlife. After a good few minutes of searching, we found a place that seemed lively, went in, ordered a beer each (that I couldn't afford) and everyone seemed to immediately leave. Great. After finishing there, the DJ turning the music off even before I'd closed the door behind me, we searched in vain for another place. Literally everywhere was dead. So much for the impact of western culture.
My final day in "proper" China started off with me having about 6 Yuan to survive. I had a grand plan to borrow excess yuan from Harriet but I couldn't find her, so I went with Angela to the park to kill time among the landscape. Nobody to sell me anything (which wouldn't have mattered anyway). We climbed a peak over the town and tried to get to the top, stopping at the point where a slip would have meant death rather than a few bruises. 6 yuan (60p) spent at the bakery on three items and a bottle of water, and I was out of cash. I ended up borrowing 100 off Angela and fulfilling my wish of trying the local beer fish before we left on the bus. My cheeky banter with the waitress only got me a larger bill as they charged for the fish by weight. Dammit. Another night train followed and the next thing we knew we were in Shenzhen, literally walking to Hong Kong.