Misty mountains

Good-bye China.   It has been great getting to know you!  Taxi leaves bright and early tomorrow.  Yangshuo to Guilin to Beijing to Toronto to Minneapolis to home sweet home.

Last day in China

Today is our last full day in China, tomorrow morning we head to the airport. It is raining off and on right now, and looks like it will rain pretty much the whole day. We have been very lucky with the weather on this trip, very little impact by rain or other weather.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To escape from the chef, of course!

So far we have had two meals involving a whole chicken – our lunch in Daxu (mentioned in an earlier post) and a recent dinner in which we unknowingly ordered chicken soup. This has prompted me to delve deeper into the fascinating topic of Chinese chickens – dead and alive. How are they different from American chickens? How are they similar? Are Chinese chickens communists? Sadly, I am only able to answer two of these questions with my accumulated knowledge. The political standing of Chinese chickens is anyone’s guess. 

Firstly, I can confidently confirm that Colonel Sander’s empire has indeed extended to the Sino-Tibetan region. A KFC can be found reliably in any major city, such that greasy fried chicken is happily consumed from Beijing to Guilin. Unfortunately for any hopeful Americans, the mashed potato and corn on the cob portions are disappiontinigly small, to say the least. On the bright side, the fried chicken still retains its delicious, crunchy taste.

Now let’s move to the countryside, where chickens roam freely through ancient villages and family gardens. Unbeknownst to these blissful birds, they might soon become someone’s lunch! Because many restaurants lack the money and space to keep meat chilled, it’s much more convenient to keep their poultry in the back yard where they can be “prepared” as soon as someone orders the stir fried chicken. It’s not uncommon for us to see wandering chickens on our bike rides and hikes, and we often joke that they are our next meal!

Enough live chickens already! While we were enjoying our breakfast one morning we spotted a woman washing chickens in a bowl of water. While it looked like they were rubber chickens, the way all the feathers had been already been cleaned off, we knew better. Upon closer inspection, we noticed that a man inside a nearby shack was butchering a chicken with a large knife. We couldn’t see the chicken (probably for the better) but we suspected it was being cut up into little bits. Chicken soup, anyone?

-Luke

Countryside wanders - my favorite activity

Can you stand one more photo of the karst mountains?  They really are spectacular and so accessible to walk among and even up some of them - not like the huge range of the Rockies. I really like this first photo from the trail on the way to Square Mountain. 

By the way, we found out about Square Mountain a few weeks ago when we were lost biking through this little village.   A group of bikers told us to follow them and we did just long enough to find out about this spot before we got back on track to our original destination. 

This place turned out to be a great surprise in how fun the cave was to come upon.   We noticed square holes all along the walls not unlike those found at Native American sites such as Mesa Verde signifying wood beam insets of cliff homes of long ago.  We asked the hotel owner about it and she said the Chinese hid out from the Japanese during WWII in this cave. 

Also included is a rare photo of Andrew agreeing to pose for a photo at the entrance to the square cave.   Finally, an experimental "sound and shot" photo I just tried on my phone.   Is there a little musical note to click and listen?

Marnie

Other pics

Hike to Square Hill

Did the hike to Square Hill this morning. It wasn't too hot, but very humid so it didn't take much effort to be drenched in sweat. Took a little work to find the trail, which was the usual cut rectangular stones. The trail goes up the front through the eye of the needle, then wraps around the back to a small door which opens to a large cave that looks out over the valley. The top was fortified with walls in multiple directions, so clearly this was a place to take refuge back in the day and hurl insults with a French accent at your enemies. Lots of metal mounts for rock climbers. Great acoustics in the passes with huge rock walls.

Rooftop dinner

We are enjoying our rooftop meals at our new place. 

Mmmmm, tastes like chicken!!!!!

Wooden flip flops

They are really comfortable.

-Neela

Home stretch

We are in the last stretch of our trip and have moved to our last hotel, the Phoenix Pagoda.  We looked on our map to find it's location before booking, but were still surprised to recognize the area when we got here.  We biked right by it on our Moon Hill bike day.  It is a nice quiet place for our last few days here.  And a short walk from a very good Italian restaurant in which the Greek salads are safe to eat!!

This photo is from our balcony.   It was very hot until the clouds rolled in and we heard a little thunder, but there is a nice breeze now.  Maybe it will rain and cool things off for our next couple of days exploring the countryside.  We'll do another bike ride or two and hike up to Square Mountain. And just sit on the balcony and listen to chickens and village life. 

Marnie

No photo included

I wanted to include a photo today to contrast with Dave's June 29th post entitled "most scenic pee I ever took..."  This would have been at the most extreme other end.  We decided that even if I had taken a photo, we would risk losing readership and falling ratings if such a photo were posted.  

No, I did not take a photo. I did, however, consciously decide to leave my sunglasses on in the dark bathroom so as not to see clearly how awful it really was.  If it had not been truly an emergency, I would have rather walked back to Yangshuo first than use that bathroom. I'll spare you the rest of the details. 

Lookin' forward to clean bathrooms in the U.S. including soap and toilet paper (that actually rips on the perforations)!!   : ) 

Xingping

I had been obsessing over how I was going to get to do the hike from Yangdi to Xingping for the last two weeks. I had read a number of accounts of this hike and all had reported it to be the most amazing hike as it is along the most scenic part of the Li River. It was to be much better than taking an expensive cruise.  (Note: All of the posts were around 4-5 years old.) 

It is a 5 hour hike with three ferry crossings required.   Too much for Neela probably but Luke and I were going to maybe try it.   Until we started trying to figure out the logistics.   We never got the same answer twice as we started looking into it.   

You could go to Yangdi, but sometimes the ticket office is closed so you should get your ticket ahead of time.   You could just take bamboo boats but only 4 fit in a boat so you have to buy 3 extra seats.   The ticket price is 100 yuan just to walk.   The price is 160 yuan to cross the river to start.   No, the ferry costs 50 yuan.  The boat costs 200 yuan per person.  You can just go to the dock and bargain.  It is cheaper if you start in Xingping.  And on and on...  You really can never be sure how anything will work ahead of time here.

Well, we finally thought we had figured out a way for us all to go and at least see part of this river section.  We got off the bus in Xingping and immediately had 5 women shouting "Hello!  Bamboo boat!" at us and tailing us through town.     

Turns out that no, you cannot just show up at the dock and bargain for a ride (all government regulated now?) so those ladies turned out to actually be helpful to us. We translated a sentence for them using Google translate to make sure we could get off halfway and hike back. They got Neela on for free (she is at least 2" taller than the free height everywhere but most people let her in free anyhow and just pretend she is close enough!) and also convinced them to let us have 5 on a boat.   

We got on our bamboo boat and the driver fired up the super loud motor and we took off into the stream of boats.   Dave felt like we were setting off to storm the shores of Normandy with all those boats taking off.

So, it wasn't really the idyllic trip down the Li River that I had hoped for.   I tried to use selective vision and hearing to imagine what this river experience would be like without all of the other people and boats.  It would be AMAZING going down it in a canoe!  

Alas, only in my imagination......

Marnie

Warm beer

Dave and I shared some warm beer up on our rooftop the other night.  Nice view of the mountains up there.  We later watched a rooftop movie with the kids which was fun. Back to the Future! We could see the mountains being lit up in different colors for the big show they do here using 600 local actors and the mountains as the backdrop.  At $60 a ticket, we opted for the Ipad movie instead. 

Marnie

Li river boat ride and hike

Rode the bus up to Xingping today where we rode a bamboo raft partway upriver and then hiked back. This is the most scenic part of the Li river, but the ambiance is degraded by the drone of all the boats. One of the views on this river is the picture on the 20 yuan bill. Stopped for lunch where we posed for more pictures with our Chinese fan club. Ended the day with a rickshaw ride back to our hotel.

Biking to Jiuxian

Hopped on the bikes again today and headed west. Had to brave the Yangshuo traffic on our bikes, I think we are getting the hang of how the right of way works here. Ran into a couple places where the roads were block by buses trying to get past each other on narrow roads, glad we were on bikes. Had lunch at the secret garden cafe, very tasty in a nice shady spot with chickens everywhere and hammocks the kids enjoyed. Fun to see all the bamboo rafts on the river. Stopped for more fresh mango on the way back.

Relaxing day

We are taking a day off from seeing the signs. Did a lot of walking yesterday and stayed up late among the crowds of people in downtown. We are finding we need a break from being tourists once in a while.

Sign on a dress shop

Funny signs

Time for another installment of those funny sign translations: