East is Relative

Further adventures in Yangshuo

And adventures they were!

Wednesday, I planned to ride my bike to Moon Hill, about 8km outside of Yangshuo. By lunch, I hadn’t left yet, so I ate lunch at the Buckland cafeteria with a bunch of teachers and students. I decided to take Y100 out of the bank in case I couldn’t make the bike ride and needed to take a cab back (plan for every eventuality). So after lunch, I rode from Buckland to the nearest Bank of China branch, only to discover my Bank of China ATM card was missing. Panic ensued. I immediately rode to the West Street Bank of China (the one I usually use in Yangshuo), and sure enough they had it – but they wouldn’t give it to me without my actual passport (I usually prefer to keep my actual passport locked up in my hotel room and carry a copy with me), and they weren’t interested in the three or four other forms of ID I had. So I had to bike all the way back to Buckland to get my passport, then all the way back to West Street to pick up my ATM card.

I’d like to pause here to say that only I would leave my bank card in the same ATM twice, several months apart.

At this point, I was tired of biking, so I looked into renting an electric scooter; in the end I decided Y80 was too much to pay for a few hours ride, and the ladies behind the counter weren’t very convincing when they said, “Oh, I think it will go all the way to Moon Hill. I’ll give you a ticket to Moon Hill right here.” When the “will the electricity last that long” conversation turns into a “here, buy another thing I’m selling” conversation, I’m out.

So I biked the 8km after all, and when I got there, I was tired, but not exhausted. I paid Y15 to get in the park, and looked at the entrance. I wasn’t looking at the circular-shaped hill that I’d come here to see, oh no. I was looking at a long set of stone stairs. I’d assumed that the circular opening Moon Hill is famous for was on the ground. It’s quite a steep climb. But I’m stubborn and decided to climb the stairs to the top.

All the way up I was following these two Chinese men who tried to talk to me, but were speaking way beyond my capacity. Behind me (and quickly overtaking me – they passed me about halfway up) were a group of French tourists. I had to stop about every 35-45 steps to catch my breath, and near the end, they were a bit wonky and shaky. One of the places I stopped had a bunch of really awesome graffiti carved into the bamboo at the side of the stairs.

And at the top, it was beautiful. Seeing all the karst mountains shrouded in mist was completely worth it. It took me about 35 minutes to walk up all the stairs to the top. I have heard you can climb all the way to the top of the circle, but I’ve also heard it’s a hard climb, so I didn’t really want to give it a try.

I started down and quickly realized that going down a flight of stairs requires your toes much more than going up it does. By the time I got to the bottom, my injured left toes were screaming at me. I’m thankful that pedaling a bike really requires more of your heels than your toes, or I wouldn’t have made it back without flagging down a bus. On the way back, I almost passed the Big Banyan Tree park without stopping, but I decided that I might not be in Yangshuo again, so I’d better go look.

The Big Banyan Tree is a tree that was planted in the Shui dynasty, about 1400 years ago (according to the park signs), and I wanted to see it. To be fair, it wasn’t worth the Y20 to get in (maybe they charge you less at Moon Hill because you have to hike to see it!), but I’m glad I went to see it anyway. There was a weak display of what I think are some Shui totems, and a “natural art museum” that was actually a bunch of gemstones, and oh by the way, you can buy them. The park was disappointing – there was a pretty river with a bunch of bamboo boats in it, but not really something I’d want to do by myself. I also could have walked across a bridge to get further in the park and see more scenery, but I would have had to walk through a tent-city of a bunch of stalls selling merchandise and stuff, and with my toes in so much pain, I didn’t want the hassle. So I biked back to Yangshuo and took a well-earned shower.

After dinner, I went down to West Street for one last night at Bar 98. I had told Yuki, the owner, that I’d come and show her how to knit in the round with 2 circulars if she bought two needles of the same size. I got there around 7pm and we sat down to a pot of tea and knitting lessons. Some of the people I’d met the night before showed up as I was eating the burrito I’d ordered (which was amazing), and I played a few rounds of pool before heading back to the hotel. I knew I was going to need a good night’s sleep before my early morning bus trip to Guilin so I could catch a 1:30pm train to Changsha.

When I got to the hotel, it was only about 11:00, so I decided to do some knitting and watch “Home Alone,” which I’d downloaded to my laptop. I’m such a sap and I totally cried at the end; I was thinking – it’s like me! My family is having Christmas without me! *nerd*

After a good night’s sleep I checked out of the hotel on Thursday the 24th, got a hug from Desta, the girl who works in the Buckland office, and headed to the bus station. I got on a bus to Guilin for Y15, and arrived about 10:00am. Perfect timing, I thought, to get my train ticket to Changsha by 1:30pm.

Well, I was wrong. Apparently, you can only buy tickets for the two trains I was planning on taking in Beijing. They’re express trains, and I guess this is pretty common, but it’s something I didn’t really know before I made this plan. I had already tried to buy my Guilin-to-Changsha ticket when I first arrived in Guilin, and instead of saying, “You can’t buy those from here,” they told me, “You can’t buy these so far in advance.” Good information, but not the most important information, right? Well, I bought a Y130 ticket that would leave Guilin at 9pm and arrive in Changsha the next morning at 6am, though I’d had reservations at the Changsha hostel for that night.

I went to sit in the waiting room and tried to go online to find the phone number of the Buckland teacher in Guilin, Daniel, to see if he wanted to get lunch or dinner. I couldn’t get the wifi to work in the Guilin train station, so I couldn’t get his number. Next, I went to call the Changsha hostel to change my reservation. My phone was out of money. Irritated and carrying a heavy bag, I decided to walk to the China Mobile I had seen across the street to try and add money to my phone. On my way across the street, my attention was drawn by a stand selling long-distance bus tickets.

I walked up to the counter and asked if they had tickets to Changsha, and they said yes. The bus would leave at noon and arrive at 6:30pm. They said it would cost me Y150. I told them I would have to go return my train ticket first, but they said they would take my train ticket as part of the payment. So I gave them Y100 and they gave me Y50 back. This is obviously Y30 short of what I expected – when I tried to get them to explain, they told me they could only give me Y100 for the price of the ticket, since they had to resell it. Well, fine. So I ended up paying Y180 for my long-distance bus ticket to make sure I got into Changsha at a reasonable hour.

I asked the people if the place across the street was, in fact, a China Mobile, and one of the ladies walked me across the street and helped me put Y50 on my phone, which was very nice of her. I ended up getting taken in a minivan with a few other people to a bus pickup point on the outskirts of Guilin, and our bus left at around 1pm.

On the bus, I slept for a bit and then cast on for a sweater and knit for awhile. A lady behind me came to watch me knit and I gave her an impromptu knitting lesson without language on the bus. She knit a few dozen stitches on my sweater, then I loaned her an extra ball of yarn and some needles and she knit herself a little swatch while we drove. I was glad to have given a fellow knitter something to do with her hands on a long bus journey. We stopped for dinner after a while and I ate some doufu, white rice, and scrambled eggs and tomato. Delicious roadside food. After that, they dropped us off for Changsha on a highway ramp. Apparently, I was in such a hurry to get off the bus that I left my knitting behind, a fact I didn’t realize until I was on a local Changsha bus.

I checked into the hostel then went to meet Aimee and Craig at Folk Bar for Christmas Eve beers. One of Aimee’s Chinese friends called the bus company and found out my knitting was in Yueyang, and she has a friend there, so hopefully we’ll be able to arrange a pickup of that stuff while I’m in Changsha.

This morning and afternoon, I Skyped with my various family members for Christmas and now I’m just waiting for Matt to arrive so we can go eat dinner at Pizza Hut. More on my further adventures later.