Tuesday 4/30:
There was a crazy thunder and lightning storm that woke me up in the middle of the night and was still pouring out rain pretty strong when we woke up the next morning. We were on the top floor next to an overhang so it was really loud and actually kinda scared me. I headed downstairs to discover that Melanie was sick. Cherish was still sick from the day before so we were 2/7 now. I checked my email to discover an email from Nate saying he knows someone who might be interested in renting the last room in my house which took a lot of stress away so hopefully that will work out.
We took taxis to Reed Flute Cave which took a lot longer than anticipated because the roads were flooded. We passed a tourist spot on the way that was under a good 8 inches or more of water. Our driver was super cool and stopped where we bought tickets and waited to drive us the rest of the way up the hill. We were supposed to meet the head teachers at 9:30 which ended up being exactly when we got there. We sat at the entrance and waited for half an hour for them while Melanie's body decided to start throwing up. Poor girl. We gave up at 10 and went in the cave. The cave was huge and really pretty with all the colored lights they have set up shining on the rocks. Sam was especially humored by the stalactite that looked like a giant peeing penis. No joke. When we finished with the cave we waited for the head teachers for at least another half hour and then started trying to figure out what to do since they hadn't showed up and we still had Cherish. I saw them walking by about 40 feet from us on another pathway that if I hadn't seen them, would have never led them to pass us. That's right.. my creeper skills come in use sometimes. Since the rain had been so bad and everything was flooded, there weren't going to be any cruises going down the Li River for the next couple days so we scrapped that idea and went on bamboo rafts on a lake by the cave. The Chinese guy on my boat was super fun and spoke English really well and was enjoyable to talk with. The rafts are just lengths of bamboo strapped together and then you sit on stools on the raft. Jay's a little bit bigger so instead of only sitting on one stool the guy made her double stool it. Funny moment that I got some good pictures of.
After our little party on the lake we caught the #3 bus back to town and met a group of Chinese people that used to live in Australia so they spoke amazing English and we had a nice little conversation. It was actually kind of awkward how we started talking. One of the ladies had a tourist book with lots of nice pictures of the area and I told her "we like your pictures," not expecting her to really say anything back since I don't speak Chinese and most Chinese don't think they are good enough at English to talk to you. When she responded in English and continued the conversation it really caught me off-guard. I'm so used to talking about Chinese people in front of them since they can't understand what I'm saying that it's going to be a problem back home. I wonder how many people I'll insult in the first week. We didn't know where to get off the bus so some random guy was helping us but told us to get off too soon so we walked around for a little while and passed a couple people getting their hair cut on the street. The sick/grumpy group got a taxi and went back to the hostel and Mikelle, Sam, and I found another bus and walked the rest of the way back. When we met up the other 3 didn't want to go get lunch so we left again and wandered the streets for somewhere good but failed to find anything the least bit desirable. UNTIL.... we found a smoothie shop. After Bahama Bucks its the next best smoothies I've ever had and they tasted a million times better because we were in China. And for only 8 yuan, baby. We also found these mentos (rolls) with black stuff in them that were pretty good. I don't think we ever figured out what it was but that's part of the magic of street food in China I guess? We also found a little music shop that Sam was fascinated over the guitars in and was lost in his own world for a while. When we got back we took taxis to the train/bus station and this, my dear friends, is why I have delayed writing about this day in my life. Ok-- here's what happened. Melanie, Sam, and I got in one taxi and Geoff, Jay, and Mikelle got in another. When the taxi dropped us off we were at a bus station but definitely not the one we wanted. It was.. more than a little frustrating. Melanie was still super sick and Sam and I had no idea what to do. Should we wait to see if the other three showed up where we were at? Should we try to meet them back at the hostel? Should we try to find the other bus station? Should we just get on a van to Yangshuo and hope they do the same? No idea. We ran into a few other ILP people there that had also gotten separated from their group and said a quick hi but then they disappeared. We found a couple of British guys and I talked to one named Andy and he told us that everything was crazy because of the rain. Apparently most of Guilin was flooded and buses between Guilin and Yangshuo were super backed up. He gave us the name for the other station in Chinese and we tried to get a taxi to take us there. Traffic was basically at a complete standstill and when we managed to find open taxis they wouldn't take us to the station because I guess it required them to get in the worst of traffic. Through all of this we were surrounded by a bunch of Chinese people waiting for buses and a crazy man in a camouflaged get-up and Chinese women trying to get us to buy different tours. Finally a guy our age approached us and asked in perfect English what he could do to help us. His English name was Francisco (so English, right?) and after we explained our situation he offered to drive us to the other station. There were 2 other guys his age in the car and an older man so we were pretty skeptical about getting in a random expensive car in the middle of China but we did it. They ended up being really awesome and while we were sitting in traffic they talked about how they came to pick up tickets for a trip the next day and how the guy driving was Francisco's uncle and he was an optometrist.. We went over this big bridge and while we were sitting there I looked out the window and discovered Geoff, Jay, and Mikelle standing in front of the other bus station. We told our Chinese friends but it was illegal to get out of the car on the bridge so we had to wait until the other side. Sam ran ahead while I walked with Melanie. The road we were walking on had water gushing out of the man holes and flowing down into a completely flooded underpass. I couldn't believe how much water there was. It took maybe 5 minutes to get off the bridge and run to the station and by that time the other 3 were gone. Sam and I decided to just get on a bus and go to Yangshuo and hope they did the same. We loaded super sick Melanie on a bus and took off on our 1.5 hour journey through the most flooded streets I've ever seen in person. Melanie slept almost the entire way and Sam and I explored the different settings on our cameras interrupted by pictures of motorcycles riding through a foot of rain and Sam's different theories about how the hills around us formed. "Them mountains over there" (as Jay just said) are gorgeous. They're nicknamed the Dr. Seuss mountains and are really random and super steep. I'll list the theories at the end of this post.
By the time we got to Yangshuo I was about to pee my pants and haven't sprinted to an available pee location that fast in a very long time. We had no idea how to get to our hostel and ended up having to pay 30 yuan for a taxi because it was the night before May 1 which is Labor Day in China so all the taxis were charging the same flat rate. It ended up being right down the street. When we walked in we found the other 3 members of our group and discovered that they had only arrived 15 minutes before us. SO glad it worked out in the end. 5 of us were in one room with a Chinese man and after playing rock paper scissors Geoff ended up in a room with 5 Chinese people. They were super nice and we all met them before we discovered the Chinese man in our room wanted to switch so in the end the 6 of us had a room all to ourselves which was really really nice. The hostel was small but I liked it especially because of Pizza. Pizza was our pet kitten for a couple days who got spoiled rotten by us as often as possible. That night we walked to one of the main streets and wandered around forever looking for something decent to eat and finally sufficed with what I called the McDonalds of China AKA super cheap disgusting food. I got noodles that apparently came with fried grease in it. Ewwwww. We discussed what we wanted to do in Yangshuo and then stopped at a travel place that booked our plans for the next 2 days for only 300 yuan a person. It was cheap and super nice to have it planned out for us. Walking back to the hostel we looked at a bunch of street vendors and found a woman who makes these woven trinkets for super cheap so I bought a couple of those along with a couple other things at other stands.
Back at the hostel I took what we call a waterfall shower. It's the mister setting on the shower head with ice cold water and in order to make it more bearable you simply pretend you're bathing in a nice cool waterfall. Totally works. I spent the rest of the evening catching up on emailing and playing with Pizza. Oh. Also.. at some point in the evening.. right before dinner I believe.. I bent over to pick up Pizza and ripped my pants. By the time we got home I had two giant rips across the back of my pants (one on each leg) that have now been turned into booty shorts I wear at the beach.
Here are Sam's theories:
1) Fissures.
2) Really jagged glaciers.
3) Asteroid shrapnel.
4) An asteroid hit the earth creating a crater that was filled by water and created the ocean. The asteroid blew debris all over the earth which is the mountains are made of and you don't see it up north because it's covered in snow.
5) Giant earthworm teeth.
What really happened is that the entire area is a karst environment. Aka.. limestone that eroded. After researching online I believe that the correct term for the mountains is mogote.
But to be completely honest, those theories were one of the many factors that made this one of the best weeks of my life.
Wednesday 5/1:
Wednesday morning I woke up to Sam playing with my hair. We were both on top bunks in an L-shape with our heads facing each other so Sam's face is what I fell asleep and woke up to. It was one of those moments that could have been super awkward but ended up being really nice. We didn't talk so I had an hour of wonderful silence before Jay woke up. She was in the bunk under me and could tell I was awake and asked if I could help her. It turned out that she was super sick and was shaking and had a bad fever. I had felt the bed shaking in the middle of the night but figured she was just having a bad dream. I got her some pills to try and help bring down the pain and fever and then got a t-shirt wet and put it on her forehead and then spent the rest of my morning sitting there holding her hand. I had the prompting multiple times that we should say a prayer together but didn't and really wished afterwards that I had listened.
We left Jay in bed for the day and the 5 of us picked up bikes at the travel center and rode to an Ancient Totem Village. It was one of the places Jay wanted to go to that I was a little skeptical of but it ended up being pretty cool. The beginning of it was a museum telling about the history with some artifacts that dated back 12,000 year ago. The people there were all brown which was really really weird to see in China. I don't know if they were actual descendents or just from another country or what. They were all dressed in animal print clothing and even had their kids there sleeping on beds. At the beginning we all grabbed hands and danced around. One of the native guys who was super short kept jumping up and hip bumping me and later picked me as his favorite and dragged me over to the side to give me a fern head wreath. Walking to the next section another one of the natives asked if Sam and I were married. There was a part that they gave us these small cattle skull necklaces and we all prayed to the skull god.
At the end there was a show you could watch which we got front row seats for. While we were waiting for it to start one of the guys acted out that Mikelle had a big butt and then proceeded to display eating her and crapping her out. SUPER weird people there. I compared it to an insane asylum. The show started and I ended up getting pulled up on stage and having to dance with a grass skirt and then winning the competition and got to wear a coconut bra that they gave to me and zips up into a purse. On the way out they had a bear and a llama that you could pay to take pictures with. This happens a lot in China but I guess if people will pay money to take pictures with random animals and you have no animal rights laws, why not?
For lunch we stopped at a random place we rode past and ate expensive soup (that was mostly water) and fried rice. We asked for spoons for the soup and discovered when we got the bill that they had charged us for them. Oh China.. you're so upsetting sometimes.
After lunch we rode to the mud caves and I got my first experience with peeing in a trough. Basically just a trench in the floor with a couple short walls for you to stand behind. I kinda liked it. We stripped down and locked our stuff up and then waited to go in. We were getting pretty worried because everyone else was wearing normal clothing but then a few Chinese guys our age came out in swim suits so we felt a little better. It turned out there was a full cave tour before you got to the mud part. Oops, wish we would have known that and had brought our cameras. The mud part ended up being just a pool next to a cleaner walkway so we could have brought more stuff with us but it ended up working out. The mud pool was a blast. I was the first one to jump in and got covered instantly by Sam tackling me. They had a small slide you could go down but the best part was just floating in mud. Who knew you would be super buoyant in mud? They had a guy working there taking pictures that got a bunch of us so we bought some from him. One of them has Mikelle and I with a Chinese guy and then Geoff and Melanie are randomly in the back looking like they got caught doing something they weren't supposed to. I love it and it's up on my wall now. I ended up taking it to class to show my kids and they fought over it and wrinkled it (the little twits) but it still looks pretty good. The mud stretched out our clothes tons so even though I was down to my underwear I figured out why some people just swim naked. They make you shower off when you get out and someone inspects your cleanliness before you can go on to the hot springs. The hot springs were just a couple shallow pools with hot water flowing into them that felt amazing. I could have stayed in there for at least an hour.
After the mud caves we rode our bikes over to Moon Hill and Sam, Mikelle, and I hiked up to the top under the big arch. My clothes were still wet so I hadn't put my shorts back on and was riding around and hiking in underwear and a tank top. On the way up we met a guy from Britain named Lee who was an architect in Shanghai I believe. He was really cool and we ended up hanging out with him the entire time there and then riding back into town with him. At the top there were a bunch of people rock climbing and one guy had super long dreadlocks that took us a few minutes to figure out what they were.
It took less time than we thought to ride back to town but it was really nice being on a bike passing all the other people there on vacation (Yangshuo is one of the tourist capitals of China) and the street vendors and other hubbub going on. We dropped the bikes off and then took turns showering at the hostel while we caught up with Jay and cuddled/played with Pizza. Jay was feeling a little bit better so the 4 girls took a rickshaw to West Street which we discovered sounds like a Chinese street name so had to stop our driver and redirect him back downtown. While we were out on the edge of town I hit on a guy riding a motorcycle and he followed us around for a while. Once we reached the actual West Street we were supposed to meet up with Sam and Geoff but there must have been a couple thousand people packed on the street that night. We ran into another ILP group from another city. Jenny and her husband were in the group and I'd met them at training. She had worked for ILP in Weihai before and had given me a lot of info about what it was like here so it was kinda cool to run into her on the other side of the world. Another girl, Kayla, had been in Weihai too and we chatted about our kids and it turned out that she taught the kids I have now. Small world, right?
We bought dinner at a nice American restaurant and I got a chicken burger for 42 yuan that was pretty good. Melanie only ate half her burger and said I could have the rest but after one bite I discovered it wasn't actually cooked all the way which caused a big scene by Melanie. We spent the rest of the evening shopping and Mikelle and I bought dresses (they have modest clothes here!!!) and I also picked up a pair of earrings and we all got matching communist hats. We took another rickshaw back to the hostel and hung out downstairs with Pizza for a while before we took the party to our room and finally went to bed after midnight. It was so nice to stay up late-- sometimes I miss the days I could make it past 10:30. Even though it was late I still couldn't sleep so Sam let me read scriptures on his phone for a while which worked pretty well on helping me eventually pass out.
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