After a well-needed sleep, I took a small, surprisingly empty bus to Yangshuo to meet up with Josh, who had gone there the previous day.
Within an hour-and-a-half, I was at the bizarrely named hostel En Attendant Godot, where he was staying. We decided to stay there on a recommendation of Helinä, our Finnish friend, who was leaving the day after my arrival to head to Vietnam.
The rain that had started in Guilin seemed to have followed me to Yangshuo, which was a pity because Yangshuo is renown for its dramatic limestone peaks and outdoor activities like rock-climbing, hiking, kayaking and cycling.
With the rains as unrelenting and torrential as they were, we didn't think they would last.
Oh how we were wrong.
It ended up raining for 6 straight days. Every time we thought the storm had passed, it would just start raining again. It actually turned out to be a really cost-effective week because the only activities Josh and I did during the day was surfing the web and alternating meals between a dumplings place and a Guangxi rice noodle restaurant. The evenings, however, were another story.
Since we never had a reason to get up early in the mornings, we could stay up late and party to our hearts content.
Our first few nights were spent at Mojos, an empty bar with an amazingly fun waitress and a beer pong table. We partied there with Helinä, along with Andy and Suzy, a German couple Josh had met during a cooking class, for Helina's going away party. Needless to say that we all ended up at one of the many clubs containing an inexplicable stripper pole (all clubs in Yangshuo had at least one stripper pole, but never any strippers).
We eventually grew tired of the emptiness of Mojos and made the move to Monkey Janes.
Monkey Janes is the backpacker hangout of Yangshuo and is located just off West street, the tourist street, where most of the bars and restaurants can be found.
Once at Monkey Janes we were instantly welcomed by our backpacker brethren and challenged to beer pong by Jane herself.
Jane was an imposing woman, whose trash-talking and sexual comments made her quite the character. Another traveller who had been in Yangshuo for quite some time had said that Jane had spent time in prison for apparently killing someone, and then opened up her hostel following her release. A questionable story, but having met her, it doesn't seem too far fetched!
It was at Monkey Janes where we were introduced to a game that sticks with you for life by Phil from England and Ferdi and Henry from Holland. The game is simple: under no circumstances are you allowed to say the word "mine". While it seems quite easy to avoid that word, veterans of the game are quite adept at getting you to say it. The punishment for saying it does not involve booze, but you have to drop and do ten push-ups wherever you stand (elevators, bathrooms, etc) or women have to do 10 jumping jacks for obvious bouncy reasons.
On my first night, thanks to the work of Phil, Ferdi, Henry and Josh, who is always quite good at getting me to fall for things, I ended up doing almost 200 push-ups!
With major pectoral soreness already setting in, we returned the following night for my 28th birthday celebrations, where I was only tricked into doing 100 push-ups.
The night was full of beer pong matches, drinking games and plenty of lewd comments from Jane. She did give me a Monkey Janes t-shirt and a shot with dead snakes stewing in it as a birthday gift.
The best gift of all, however, was to settle a dispute between a German girl and a Norwegian girl as to who had the bigger breasts. They each claimed that the other was more endowed but needed the unbiased opinion of a fellow traveller. Seeing as though it was my birthday, everyone nominated me to be the judge.
With an unscrupulous attention to detail and thorough empirical comparison, I came to the conclusion that the mountains of Norway are in fact bigger than the German alps.
Happy birthday to me!
We continued to frequent Monkey Janes every evening thereafter and played Chinese dice and other games with our new group of friends. Josh even managed to beat Jane at beer pong a few times.
After 6 days of rain and 6 nights of partying, there was finally a break in the weather: it was sunny!
To take advantage of our one nice day, we decided to hike along the picturesque Li river and its iconic karst mountains, along the 16-km hiking trail between Yangdi and Xingping.
In order to complete the trek, you need to hire a boat to cross the Li river at 3 different points along its length. We ran into a problem when trying to negotiate at the first crossing. The woman wanted to charge us 10 times the normal rate and when we refused and tried to find another boat, she proceeded to follow us and told the other boats to follow suit.
By this point, we had been searching for an hour and still hadn't even started the hike yet. We saw two white people and asked if they could help us. They already had a package tour but we spoke to a Chinese man who also spoke fluent French who was walking with them.
He tried to get a captain to take us across for a fair price. In an incredibly selfless move, he had already paid for a river cruise for him and his significant other, but refused to go unless the driver also took us across the river. The captain finally agreed and did the 15 second detour it took to bring us to the other side. We thanked the man who stood up for us and told him we would not forget his kindness. Something that should have only took 15 seconds ended up taking an hour-and-a-half, to think we had to cross two more times!
Once we were finally on the trail, the rewards far outweighed the difficulties: orange-tree fields as far as the eye could see framed by magnificent karst peaks, cut intermittently by the gentle Li river.
This was the China I had always envisioned. We passed many farmers toiling in their fields who were unfazed by our presence, and screaming school-children, intent on getting our attention.
Along the way, we passed Andy and Suzy who were doing the same trek but in the opposite direction.
Surprisingly, the two other ferry crossings went off without a hitch save for being slightly overcharged.
In the late afternoon, we finally arrived in Xingping, a 1000-year-old village whose karst mountains are pictured on the back of a 20 Yuan note.
We then went to This Old Place to have a tea and meet up with Andy and Suzy who would be joining us shortly.
It is quite a shame that during the week we were in Yangshuo, we only had one rainless day, considering the many outdoor activities available in the area, but the parties and people we met more than made up for it.
From here, Josh and I would be splitting up. I would be going southwest to Yunnan province to explore some of China's most attractive and ethnically diverse cities, and Josh would be headed back to Hong Kong to meet his former work colleague as well as our awesome Hong Kong host, Mike.
A 10-day vacation from Josh? He couldn't have been happier (Hahahaha)!
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