Week 2
Sat 25 Dec 04
Christmas day was cold again. After our usual breakfast of steamed buns and hot soybean milk we set off for our last 40km into Yangshuo. No more long breaks sitting in the sun admiring the views - it was way too cold for that - we took walking breaks instead. It was the fastest 40km we have done yet! In just under 4 hours we spotted our first tourists - bus-loads of Hong Kong Chinese riding bicycles and tandem bikes to Moon Hill. They all smiled and waved at us and took photos.
Yang Shuo has been smartened up a lot since I was last here 5 years ago. The main tourist street now has similar quaint wooden signs on all the shops and hotels making it look like something in the french Alps. The tourist composition has changed too. The grungy western backpackers on extended vacations have been replaced (or maybe just considerably outnumbered) by Hong Kong and mainland Chinese tourists who are here in very large numbers - often following their tour guide's flag down the street. There is now Giordano and Baleno clothes shops along with the painting scrolls, name chop and other souvenir shops.
The cafes still have backpacker menus though so Catherine and I eagerly tucked into vege-burger and chips, pizza and chocolate pancakes with glasses of Baileys to celebrate the Christmas spirit. I love Chinese food but sometimes it's great to have a change.
The cafe where we had dinner had live music - a Chinese guy singing Mandarin (and the odd western) cover songs and playing his guitar. The Chinese in the packed restaurant sang along at appropriate places and the atmosphere was very merry. After the live music finished, the music changed to full-on dance music and a small dance floor area was made at the back. All very different from a few years ago.
The internet seems faster here than in Wuzhou. But not by much. I've had to type some of this blog more than once which is demoralizing - but it makes it worth while writing a diary if there is a chance someone else might actually read it!
I still haven't heard from Steine and family who are supposed to be joining me in 2 days time. It may be that their e-mails have been stopped by my junk mail filter - I'll have another look tomorrow.
Sun 26 Dec 04
Rest day - and Catherine's last day. Catherine wasn't feeling too well so we had a lazy day: reading and shopping. I managed to write up my blog and create a page of photos on my website.
The photo processing place that transferred my photos from my digital camera card onto CD didn't give me a large and small version like they usually do in Hong Kong. And the internet place didn't have any photo editing software to change the photo size or crop photos. But they didn't seem to have much security on their PC either so I managed to download and install some freeware to do that. I wrote the HTML for the webpage manually in notepad - complete geek that I am!
YangShou was a lot quieter today - the busloads of Chinese tourists have gone home - maybe it is a weekend or long-weekend phenomenon. Now it is the much calmer place I remember and I can see other foreign backpackers again.
In the evening we had dinner with Cindy, a work colleague of Catherine's who she bumped into this morning.
Mon 27 Dec 04
Catherine left by taxi to the airport at 8.30am. I was sad to see her go - she's been great company for the last week - never complaining about anything (and there was plenty of potential...), seeing the bright side of problems and staying calm in the face of adversity. I hope my future travelling companions will be as good.
Talking of which, I wasn't sure when (or even if) Zoe, Stine and family were coming which was a bit of a worry - but later in the day they called and arrived about 3.30pm. I was very happy to see them as I'd had visions of being alone for the next week. We (Stine (mother), Roman (father), Freyer (17 year old daughter), Zoe (17 year old friend) and Caspian (8 year old son) took a walking tour of Yang Shou and had dinner together.
Tues 28 Dec 04
We spent the morning sorting out rental bikes for everyone - it was tough to find a child's bike with gears for Caspian but we found a really good one eventually.
Then we rode to Moon Hill (about 8 km away) and walked up the 880 steps (or 360m according to the persistent drinks-selling ladies who followed us up) to see the great views from the top. The ride there and back was a good trial run for everyone to try out their hired bikes on Chinese roads and see my pace (Usually 13-15km/hr which is a bit slower than most bikes usually go). Caspian didn't have any trouble keeping up - in fact he seemed to have more energy than any of us.
Stine fell at one point and hurt her ankle - the Chinese doctor has given her some herbs for it - hopefully she'll be able to cycle tomorrow.
Wed 29 Dec 04
Stine's ankle was still feeling bad this morning and Roman's stomach was not so good either so they decided to take the bus and keep Caspian with them too. So me, Freya and Zoe did the 40km back to LiPu.
On the outskirts of the town, I spotted a car wash. Car washes in China are completely manual; lots of people, buckets, hoses and cloths. They also wash motor-cycles but not usually bicycles as most bicycle owners would never bother. However, they were amused and happy to wash my unicycle back to gleaming for a mere 2 yuan.
We found a nice,warm hotel in Lipu (The Dong Feng Bing Guan). Caspian shared a room with us and I fell asleep to Zoe reading aloud to everyone from Harry Potter.
Thurs 30 Dec 04
We woke up to rain and freezing cold (maybe 2 degrees C) this morning. I was gung ho to cycle anyway (it was only drizzling) if it had just been me but the town at the scheduled end of the ride was small and the hotel possibly unheated so if we'd arrived cold and wet, it would have been pretty miserable. So we decided to sit it out in Lipu. It was the right decision - it stayed cold and the rain was occasionally harder and persistent.
We spent the morning taking turns to read aloud from Harry Potter - the only book anyone had - which was fun. Later we climbed up some steps a monument on a hill (possibly LiPu's only 'tourist attraction') overlooking the town. The city had a river and although was a fairly standard Chinese town, it had a great backdrop of Guelin's mountains which we could glimpse through the rain-clouds.
In the afternoon, we took pictures in the market: beautiful fresh vegetables - carrots, pumpkins, tomatoes, green vegetables and fruit - apples, oranges, pomelos and dried meat (including dried dog - the whole animal including the head), cobblers making shoes and steaming food for sale. Everyone was very friendly and curious to know why tourists would be in their small town.
It must have been unusually cold weather for LiPu as no-one looked happy about it. Most people in stores along the road seemed to have stopped all pretence of work and were huddling around fires (real ones, not the electric kind). Everyone seemed to have a fire either inside (ie in the middle of the floor - no fireplaces or chimneys here - no problem with fumes as the front was open to the elements) or just outside their store. To make one you just needed a container - an enamal bowl (of the kind usually used for washing dishes), or an old wok, or in some cases a brick container especially designed for the purpose, or if desperate, don't bother with a container - as long as you have a concrete floor, and a few lumps of coal. You just needed to light the fire and find some friends to huddle around it with. Very sociable.
Fri 31 Dec 04
It seems much warmer today - maybe 8 degrees C - but most importantly - blue skies and sunshine - a great day for riding. Unfortunately, Roman's stomach was still feeling dodgy and he also had a sore throat now so he decided to throw in the towel. The family were only supposed to be doing a few more days anyway - and they decided that they would cycle back to Yang Shuo today and leave me and Zoe to continue on our own.
The weather was almost perfect for cycling and after the unsheduled rest day yesterday, I was full of energy. The stone km markers seemed to go past easily even with the few gentle hills we had. Gradually the strange caste formation hills that lined our route changed to normal shaped hills but mostly we seemed to be riding through flat valley floors with fields on both sides.
Because of the cold, we tried to take breaks in towns where we could sit in some shelter - and use their toilet facilities too - not that it was any warmer than the side of the road really. One place we stopped, the toilet was next to, and fed directly into the pig sty. This is quite a common system - but usually the pigs are not visible - but you just hear them on the other side of the wall or under the toilet.
I can only presume that the 4 pigs in there had other sources of nourishment too - as they looked pretty big and healthly. I had a (somewhat one-sided) chat to them. Pigs always look so intelligent - and I've heard that they are too - definitely more so than cows or chickens - yet these ones had the indignity (and potential health consequences) of having to eat human sewage. Well, they looked healthy enough and even had plastic tags in their ears - which I presume indicates that they have been innoculated against some diseases.
When we stop, people keep asking if Zoe is my daughter. She does look young for her age (she is 17) but I'd prefer it if they suggested we might be sisters. I'm kind of offended that I look old enough to be her mother - Isn't this kind of exercise supposed to keep you young!
Our hotel, in the small town of Toupai, was supposedly heated - but you wouldn't know it and we were both pretty cold. Although we found in the morning that I'd been sleeping next to a large open window - I had checked behind the curtains and seen the mosquito net and assumed that the glass window behind it was closed but it hadn't been. Not a mistake I'll make again. I'll make a point to check for open windows at every hotel after this.
We visited the hotel's Karaoke bar briefly - it being New Year's Eve, but there was only one other (very drunk) couple there, and there weren't any songs in English (apart from Happy Birthday) to choose from. We were both pretty tired from the ride and as much as we thought about staying up to see the New Year in, we both fell asleep around 10pm and had to wish each other 'Happy New Year' in the morning!