Sitting at the Guilin airport about ready for the next leg of our journey to X'ian, to Huashan Mountain and then onto Beijing. Hard to believe that we will be home in 8 days....then it`s a matter of paying off the accumulated visa bill. Yikes.
Other China impressions so far:
The drive from the airport to Yangshuo was quite pretty, roads were in good condition, speed limits were at 120 km/hr and cars outnumber motos again.
We had heard that facebook and blogger, both of which we use every day, are not available. Once we got our net books fired up, we discovered it was true: social networking sites appear to be blocked and when I googled a bit, I saw many opinions about censorship and then some that explained a more technical background. When we flicked on the TV, we found no stations that broadcasted in English whereas all other countries, however poor, have had some English channels.....interesting indeed. Hmmmm...I think I will learn a bit more about all this over the next week and will fill you in.
So we owe a big thanks to Andrea who has agreed to post our blog which we are going to email her every couple of days to keep you all updated while we are banned from the site here in China. We owe you, my friend! Also thanks to Tim who has hopefully by now updated my facebook page saying that I won't be on it to give updates or respond to any email until I`m home (if you have not done so yet, Tim: pressure is on now!!!)
The town of Yangshuo was not geared towards westerners as much as others have been, I think (lonely planet and I seem to differ in our opinions). Titles of stores were often only in Chinese and the letters/symbols obviously mean nothing to us, so we approached some places thinking it was a restaurant, only to discover it was a hotel, drugstore or other. Stores don't seem to have as much western food and restaurants have smaller western sections. We did see some horsemeat, frog and lots of duck on the menu. We played it safe last night with rice and veggies, but I will surely try some local delicacies that I would not be able to get at home before leaving China. Not horse meat, though.....(as many of you know, my Mom used to run a horse stable).
As Michelle said, the mountains around the town are lit up at night the same we saw in Greece last year, very pretty. Families are out until late with babies and small children in order to avoid babysitters, I guess.
Since we are visiting two larger cities, we wanted to try something small and scenic and Chelsea's friend Megan suggested this place, which really was pretty and quiet.
Since Chelsea and Michelle offered to write the last two blogs of our surfing day and biking day, I will just add a piece about impressions of Bali:
-high curbs, checkered black and white in most places. reminds me of being in Belfast and having the sidewalk borders colored differently according to protestant etc.
-motorbikes with little holders on the side for surfboards
-beautiful craft stores everywhere
-lots of colors in clothing, sarongs, blankets....everything seemed bright and colorful
-sidewalks often had big gaping holes in them, you really had to pay attention when you were walking
-Pringles and chips came in LOBSTER flavor
China's Yangshuo:
-when you walk on sidewalks, every 20 meters or so, you get dripped on. We are so used to rain that we first expected that it was just another rainshower, but it is the dripping air conditioners from the 1st floor windows hanging outside and condensation dripping down.
-a lot of people carry umbrellas when walking, they also have little umbrella holders on their bicycles which are commonly used here
-we walked into a supermarket: only chocolate bar we found was 'Dove' (not that good), they have Oreo cookies you can buy in a roll
-Pringles came in "Wild and spicy" (so wild, I could only eat a few) , salmon flavored, weird chicken ones...
-a lot of people seem to spit a lot....hmmmm....Michelle seems to remember this from another country and thought it was maybe Thailand
Since starting this little write-up, we have managed to fly from Guilin to X'ian and are done with our Air Asia experiences: we actually had a bit of legroom on the China Southern flight (my knee caps were quite excited), and we got a meal and drinks. On Air Asia, "the world's best airline", you did not even get water for free...but it was cheap. So the flight was nice, they played a little video which showed a number of stretches and other things to relax muscles, push on tendons, cover ears...at first I thought it was only there to watch, but then I noticed that a number of passengers were following along. Quite funny actually. So it is almost like an exercise class on the plane. Chelsea and I both followed along with a smirk on our face while Michelle, who was seated between us with her Ipod on, was just shaking her head while watching us desperately trying to keep up with the rather speedy video....we likely weren`t the most trained plane-exercisers.
We had paid to have someone sent to pick us up which has been so nice on our travels. The costs are relatively inexpensive and it takes away the searching for buses or trains which might get you "close" to where you want to go and then roaming the streets with our bags. So we got a drive in, were able to ask a lot of questions from our little co-driver/hotel employee/helper whose English name was Chelsea (many Asians give themselves an English name for use with westerners to make things easier...similar to our Cambodian Habitat friends Eric and Raymond we mentioned earlier in the blog). We went out for dinner and walked up the central area where we saw the famous Bell and Drum Towers which we will visit again tomorrow in daylight. The restaurant we found was completely Chinese and we had two little waitresses who were pretty amused by us trying to make out the menu which consisted of pictures and Chinese writing. In order to explain meals (they knew a bit of English, but not exact menu words), we ended up making animal sounds like "Quack Quack" or "Baahaaaa" to narrow down the meats...it was pretty funny. we ended up being a bit of an entertainment focus in the restaurant, it seemed, as we were being watched and it seemed that the waitresses were bringing other ones to come have a glance. We were told that we were charming...I first thought she meant to say "chubby"... earlier in the conversation, she explained that the chicken was delicious...Chelsea thought it was "dangerous". Our language issues and mishaps have been numerous on this trip and have been the source of many laughs.
Well, I have to continue my beer updates: Michelle and I tried Tsingtao, the local Chinese beer. Very light, good and very tasty! We are now heading to bed at around midnight as we have an early morning ahead with 7:15 breakfast and a 7:30 meeting with Chelsea (Chinese Chelsea) to firm up our plans for Huashan Mountain where we are trying to head for the famous climb. We need to meet her to see how we can stay overnight there to see the sunrise, they have hotels on top of some of the peaks.
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