December 2017 (by YK) Itinerary Link
This is the image I had for Yangshuo & Guilin.
Well, it didn’t quite turn out to be. To start off, a bullet train was involved. This train covered 400 Km in 2 hours, from Guangzhou South to Yangshuo. The station in Yangshuo was not quite as big or modern like Guangzhou South, but it was not a sleepy small hut, either. In fact, it was a rather unattractive brick building with a big parking lot in front.
There were cab or van drivers touting for customers as soon as you got out of the building. Somehow, our non-English speaking driver, who was sent by our host, found us & drove us close to an hour to deliver us to the Airbnb studio. We could see from the train some karst peaks as seen in the brush painting above, but we saw more and more as we got closer. The town itself looked like an improvised tourist resort with full of low rise hotels and hostels.
Our host called his operation, “Fun Sam’s B&B“, and he had enlisted his whole family: his father, a retired government worker, drove the van as needed, and his mom cooked wonderful meals as requested by the guests. His girlfriend, Li, was our tour guide. All very warm, nice people. The room was spacious, but it was more like a high end hostel than a hotel.
We walked down to the main road to have a late lunch, and we decided to see the light show that evening produced by Zhang Yimou, the film director who directed the spectacles of the Beijing Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. There was a rather elaborate production going on with seeing this show. First, the organizers picked us up from the B&B and eventually filled the van with other show-goers at various stops. Then we were told to come back to the exact spot where we got dropped off right after the show is over. We followed the others and walked for 5 minutes or so to reach the theatre front yard. “Go find #99” was the instruction we got from our host, and there were tons of people with pickets showing different numbers in the jam-packed yard. We spoke the magic word, “from Sam” to the lady with #99. She gave us a scrap of paper, and with that, we went to another person to get our tickets. Then we walked for another 5-10 minutes within the theatre complex to reach the seating area. Our tickets seemed to say VIP ticket of some kind, and we were guessing they were not the most expensive ones but not too shabby either. We paid about $35pp.
The show was spectacular, a Zhang Yimou kind of show for sure, with more than 600 performers depicting the life and culture of the area using the river and the karst peaks as natural theatre backdrop. But it got so cold at night that we could not enjoy the show as much as we should have. We should have brought a thick blanket or two.
Our room had a wall-mounted heater which worked reasonably well, but the lobby and the kitchen were not heated. Next morning, our breakfast was in the kitchen, and the hot broth of the noodle soup was spot on and delicious.
We picked our bikes & followed our leader, Li, to the Yulong River. It was off-season, and, we did not see too many other tourists around where we were. Some of the old villages were modernizing in their own ways, and that did not necessarily help the scenery. Still, the life seemed mellow and was unfolding at its own pace, and it was relaxing for us to be part of that even when we were trying to pedal around big, dusty construction trucks.
Looking for lunch, we went to West Street, the old part of town where tourists go shopping and eat. I saw some plump dried persimmons and wanted one. When I showed one finger thinking the posted price was for one piece, she got a plastic bag & put a whole bunch in. No, it was $1.50 for one bag! Delicious.
After taking a break back in our room, we went down to the river bank to experience what they called, ‘bamboo rafts.’ There seemed to be more than one kind of boat used for this, and one we had was a 50-minute ride on this small boat, which did not really look like it was made of bamboo. The driver could not tell us much since he spoke no English, but the scenery did not require much explanation. “Where did these karst peaks come from?,” I had asked Li, and she said this part of China was under the ocean millions of years ago. What we see now is, in other words, the underwater scenery that is exposed.
Cormorant fishing is another thing this area is famous for, but the tour was canceled that day due to not enough people interested in seeing it. Catching fish using trained cormorant bird would have been something interesting to watch, but we did not get the chance. Sam’s mom made a wonderful seafood hot pot dinner, and Sam’s father poured some bai-ju(Chinese white liquor) for us. Being part of a Chinese family for the evening was a nice way to end the day.
