This was my third time in China. First was when I was 8 years old, my parents and I went on a tour to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou; second time was two years later, during a trip to Vietnam’s northern provinces we crossed the Lao Cai – Hekou border for a short visit (for it is close to Vietnam a lot of Chinese there speaks Viet, I still remember those stores with broken Vietnamese advertising sex toys.)
Day 1
After traveling by bus from Hanoi heading North East for several hours during the night, we arrive at the China – Vietnam border (not the one I’d been to before in the second time mentioned above). I think it was called the Friendship Gate. Unlike Hekou where Vietnam and China are divided by a river and you walk through a bridge to get to the other side, Friendship gate has no river but lots of mountains surrounding. After about an hour doing some paperwork, we got through swiftly.
No, I’m not someone who doesn’t love my own country but I have to admit that after you cross the order it’s an entirely different experience, though the gap wasn’t much. China is cleaner while in Vietnam you can find trash anywhere on the street, has more trees which was really refreshing.
We met our China tour guide, she spoke fluent Viet with a full northern accent which was, 50% of the time hard to understand. Well I wasn’t listening anyways. She was cute though.
We had lunch somewhere near the border. Like a typical Chinese meal all the dishes was very oily, cooking oil, oyster oil, oil oil oil oil. 7 years ago when I traveled the first time to China to bigger and more modern cities and even then I didn’t even like the food in any slightest bit. The oyster oil made the dishes smell really awful back then. Now I don’t really smell anything (my nose was clear still, I could smell Chinese 5m away), yet I can’t really taste most of the food (there were about 10 dishes or so and I could only eat 1-2). I’ve been told that if you go to the right place Chinese food could be very tasty.
I could bitch about the food all day, but let’s just move on. So it took like 6 hours for us to get to Guilin, traveling at 120km/h. Imagine how long that would take if it were in Vietnam. We had dinner, wasn’t good but uh huh okay; I spotted a KFC on the street and was going to fill my stomach there later on but decided to stay in the hotel because I was too weary.
Day 2
Next morning we went to a cave that was similar to Ha Long Bay. The difference here is that there were more lights that made it look more mysterious and those would only turn on only when you visit a specific area (saving power ftw) and no trash. I didn’t find the cave significant though, and I never liked the natural wonder we have back in Vietnam, so it was kind of boring.
There were some turtles that were rumored to be of more than thousand years old but I doubted it. They charged 5 yuan for the entry and when you’re inside you can feed the turtles, buy some kind of luck charms that cost 10-20 yuan.
After wandering in the boring cave we finally got out. My dad got hooked on a wooden buffalo (or was it a pig?) and bought it for 300 yuan-ish, which I thought was expensive for such an ugly craft.
We then spent two hours on a boat going along the Li river. The water looks clean and clear and there were a lot of native Chinese swimming and fishing in it. It wasn’t too deep, you could see the bottom standing from 5m above.
No, he didn't stop there.
The boat only travels a part of the river then turns back, which wasn’t good enough for my dad. He read the Lonely Planet. He knew something about a boat that travels along the Li river from Guilin to Yangshuo that cost 200 yuan; unfortunately it had already set sail. So we went to Yangshuo by bus.
Yangshuo was a really cool place. There is a West Street in the center of the city that has many pubs with western food, clubs and bars with attractive music that send adrenalin rushing through your brain, low-priced shops but to get that you need real good haggling skill. People here do speak some English, which makes it easier for everything. I really like this place, am thinking about going back one day and stay here for a while, it would be really nice.
One end of the street faces Li river so my dad made us go on some boat trip again. At least the landscape was better than Guilin, and again there were people swimming and fishing because it was clean. My dad was tempted to jump into the water but he couldn’t find any swimsuit. We saw some foreigners jumping from cliff and dived into the water swam swam then climbed up and jumped again. One of them was stripping and he noticed us staring and so he showed off some muscles and got more cheering XD Another Chinese man was swimming against the current intensely but he didn’t make any progress. Then I realized he wasn’t really swimming because when he stood up the water only stood to his knees (lol) (more lol plz?)
Let's see how far you can go!
I also saw lots of duck on the way ;]
A duck
Had dinner at the hotel and it was by far one of the best, the servers were friendly and one of them spoke English. I then learned that the Chinese do not like ice, they don’t put much ice into drinks or most of the time, nothing at all. Also while their food is very oily, they stay healthy thanks to the green tea they drink after every meals. We went back to West Street. I found a shop that sold good-quality, cute notebooks and spent 140 yuan there. I tried to haggle, using every body language and number I knew and though I succeeded, since one of the shopkeepers nodded; then I found out that haggling wasn’t allowed and that the girl that nodded didn’t understand English or whatever language I made there. Also bought a new backpack for 60 yuan. Haggled. Dropped from 100 yuan to 60 lawl :] but that wasn’t the best part. I wanted to buy a cute little folding fan (did I tell you about my folding fan passion?), asked for the price and shockingly the man said 80. 80 for a little folding fan. So we walked away and he was like heyy 40 ok? and we were like no and kept walking. When we walked past his stall again he tried to sell it and I offered 10. To my surprise, he agreed on that.
Later on when I called my mom using a China SIM that allowed you to make 25 minutes of international calls and 100 text messages (very convenient, 50 yuan), my mom told me that I should’ve said 5. But because I am a girl with compassion, I honestly did feel guilty buying that fan for 10 yuan, not to mention 5; the man looked really… I don’t know, ‘pitiful’ is too harsh a word.
Walked back to the hotel, about 3km I think.
