Yangshuo was heaven on earth. I could spend the rest of my life here. It was indescribably beautiful. It's also known as the party town of Southern China basically, and rightly so. There's clubs and bars everywhere, and every night you can hear the music from blocks away. It was a great place to spend Chinese New Year for sure!
West Street
West Street wasn't actually just one street... It was like 10. or 50. But it was the main area of Yangshuo with tons of shops and restaurants and kiosks and bars and clubs everywhere. It was always bustling with people, especially on the New Year. Our hostel was right on West Street which was super convenient.
Minority Cafe
We lived at this place. It was SO GOOD. By this point we were all craving american food so much, and this little cafe had western food galore! The best was their Banana Crumble. I got that for dessert every single night I think. Even when we didn't eat dinner there. I miss this place so much. haha.
Sunday Bike Ride & Mud Caves
Sunday morning we woke up and decided to go on a bike ride! So we found a place that rented out bikes, and this sweet little lady, who was at least in her 50s or 60s and not even 5 feet tall, was our tour guide and took us on an all day bike ride through the country side. It was amazing! Then we took a little pit-stop at the mud caves, and went and played in mud and then sat in the hot springs inside the cave afterwards! And yes we ARE wearing clothes... it just doesn't look like it. lol.
Bamboo Rafting on the Li River
Absolutely amazing. Are there any other words? We loved bike riding so much, that we had sweet little Esther take us on another bike ride to the Li River. She dropped us off and they loaded our bikes on a truck, and then ushered us onto the rafts. Luckily we had time to buy some flower headbands before! The river had 9 little "waterfalls", if they can even be called that. But going down them on this small little bamboo raft was a bit scary! Me and Emily were glad that we wore our swimsuits, and we sat on the edge of the raft for a few and got completely soaked. We even tried standing up going down some of them... that was terrifying. haha. We literally spent the entire hour and a half in disbelief that this was our life. It was a complete dream!
20¥ Lookout Point, Xingping
We just went on a short day trip to Xingping, a quick 45 minute bus ride from Yangshuo. The 20¥ bill is the view overlooking the river from Xingping. And rightly so, because it's gorgeous!
Street Markets
Street markets are pretty easy to find in China. This one was especially memorable, for a few reasons. (If you get queasy easily or are very pro-animal rights... you may want to skip this section) Nothing in China is sanitary. Hardly ever. We get really excited when we see restaurants or bakeries wearing gloves when they prepare food, because it's pretty uncommon. And the street food is especially unsanitary, because they just lay out food on blankets, or boxes on the road. We usually only buy fruit from the markets when it's peel-able. This is an extreme example of a market, but it just gives you a quick glimpse of what's 'normal' in China.
Bamboo for sale, anyone?
This is the sickening part. Yes. That's a dog. A few people in our group unknowingly ate some dog meat. They said it actually tasted good... until they found out that it was dog.
Party Time!!
Yangshuo is known as a party town... So of course we had to go party!! We went one night into the Tang Night Club/Bar. They had a stage in the center of the room and of course, us Americans love being the center of attention, and we danced on it all night! Drunk guys would come dance with us for a while, but I think they would get too dizzy and wouldn't stay long! haha. It reeked of smoke and alcohol, but was still such a fun night just dancing all night long. Us mormons know how to party and still remember it the next day!
Chinese New Year's Eve
Me and Emily went out on West Street New Year's Eve, and it was absolutely dead. NO ONE was outside and all the shops were closed. It was bizarre. We stopped at one of the few restaurants that was open, and tried some bamboo. And it was delicious! Gonna learn how to make this in America for sure, especially because it's so healthy!
Originally we had gone out looking for a post office. We found a girl who spoke English named Hana, and she told us it was closed because of the New Year. She spoke amazing English, and she was looking for her hostel, so we helped her find it, and ended up spending the next two days with her! She was so fun! She taught us about Chinese New Year a lot too! In China, the New Year is like how Christmas is in America; it's all about family. Everything is closed and people just spend all their time with family. The day after the New Year and the following two weeks is meant to be spent traveling to visit other relatives. It was really cool to walk around and see families everywhere. It was much different seeing West Street packed with families with children instead of the usual tourists and partiers.
Anyways, Hana spoke such good English because her husband is from the UK, but he wasn't here for the New Year because his mother had passed away and he was in the UK with their son also. So she was taking a vacation to Yangshuo all alone, and was looking for some friends, and luckily she found us!!
Our hostel was having a dumpling-making party that night, so she came with us.
She explained that this was a tradition for families to all make dumplings together for dinner on New Year's Eve, and she *tried* to help us make them look good. There were hundreds of dumplings. And we ate them ALL. Hana only ate 5 and she was full! And us americans.... probably an average of about 30 each. We were such pigs! But they were delicious! Hana was so great and so fun! We introduced her to Minority Cafe later that night and made her try the banana crumble too! We loved her!
Happy New Year!
New Year's Day was so fun!! We woke up in the morning and decided to rent scooters! We got 3 scooters for the six of us, and got it for a killer deal. about 4 USD per person all day long. I love prices in China. haha. It was really scary trying to get out of the city, because it was packed with cars because of the New Year. I accidentally ran into another scooter.... good thing there was no damage because he didn't speak English and we don't speak Chinese! haha. But we just spent the whole day exploring! We came across a park that claimed to have the Wind and Rain Bridge, which was on my bucket list to see! (come to find out it's not the same one... oh well.) Only 3 of us decided to go see it so we ran through the entire park in about 15 minutes so the other girls didn't have to wait forever, and it was so fun and so gorgeous!! When we left it started to sprinkle... and in about 10 minutes it was a torrential downpour. Trying to drive a scooter, with no glasses, visor, anything to block your eyes... is not the easiest thing in the world. We were soaked to the bone in a matter of minutes. But it was one heck of an adventure and I wouldn't trade it for anything!!!
Yangshuo was by far my favorite, and I'd go back in a heartbeat!
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