The Chronicles of Yangshuo: The Last Two Days

Our third day in Yangshuo was beautiful.  We rented bikes for the day and set off for the Golden Water Caves near Moon Hill.  It was a lovely ride, although our backsides were still a little sore from the first day.  There were about a billion bikes out on the road though.  Seriously...bikes everywhere.  Normal bikes, tandem bikes, little two-seater surreys, mopeds, motorcycles, and then there were also cars, buses, trucks, and so on.  It was CHAOS.  Seriously, we all broke so many traffic laws.  But to get anywhere in a timely fashion you had not choice but to weave, cross, dodge, and take matters into your own hands.

OH!  That reminds me.  I forgot to tell this story in the first Chronicles of Yangshuo.  When we were riding back from Moon Hill, Soren, Jenna, and I were playing a game to see how many people we could get to say "Hi" to us after we said "Hi" to them.  It was super fun to ride up alongside people and say, "Ni Hao!" They would respond with a surprised "Hullo!" and then they'd smile.  It was a happy game.  As I was riding up alongside two Chinese guys in a surrey, I hollered "NI HAO!"  and quickly passed.  They responded with a quick "Ni Hao," but then noticed that I was white...and blonde.  I then heard a frenzied "Hullo.  Hullo!  You are beautiful!"  It was pretty funny.  A few minutes later, I pulled over to the side of the road to join Jenna and Soren who were waiting there.  The rest of our group had gotten behind, so we decided to wait for them.  While we were stopped there, my two friends in the surrey drove up.  The one leaped out of his seat and I knew it was picture time.  I'm 99.9% sure that he is trying to kiss my cheek in that picture. He was hilarious. I'm just mad I didn't get a picture with him on my camera.

Anyway...anyway...we rode to the Caves.  We changed into our swimsuits in a super sketchy bathroom, waited for our guide, and then went into the caves.  As far as caves go...I mean...it was a cave.  It had cool formations and everything, but what made it fun was the lights.  They lit the caves up with all kinds of colors and it was awesome.  We were joined on our cave tour by a man and his daughter who turned out to be Utah Mormons.  Small World!  But Soren and I couldn't stop with the Goonies references.  After all, it was our time...it was our time down there.

The lights in the cave

ooohhh...pretty

Sitting on the throne

 After walking through the caves, we came upon the mud pits.  Awwwww yeeaaaaahhhh...mud.  We slid into the cool mud that went up to our thighs.  It was pretty thin mud with grainy bits of this and that in it, but it was oddly refreshing.  Our guide kept motioning that I needed to sit down and float.  I didn't really see how that was going to happen, but I put all fear aside and sat in the mud.  I'm not sure what it is about that stuff, but you just float.  I didn't even have to try.  But once you were on your back it was hard to roll over or get back up.  It was super fun.  They even had a little slide for us to go down. But we did not find One Eyed Willie's treasure...that was kind of a bummer.

Standing in the mud

floating in the mud

Embracing the mud

Praising the mud

We had mud everywhere.  Even after showing and rinsing, sitting in a hot spring for 30 minutes, and rinsing again, we could not get rid of it.

That afternoon, we had some amazing Indian food...like...really amazing Indian food.  Award winning, I believe.  It was tasty.

Filling our stomachs with yumminess

That night we wandered around Yangshuo, taking in the atmosphere, buying lots of stuff, and eating more food.  Soren and I went and danced in the park with a bunch of locals.  Some of them were doing dance aerobics and others were doing ballroom-type dancing.  One of the mountains towered right above us.  Beautiful place to dance.

The next day was possibly my favorite.  We got to take our Li River cruise on a bamboo raft...well, blue pvc pipe raft...but it was still cool.  The docks were only a 30ish minute bike ride from our hostel.  We went to the wrong docks at first, but soon everything was straightened out and we were on our way down the river.  Our bikes were strapped to the front so we didn't even have to worry about parking them.

At the docks

Jenna, Morgan, and Heather on their raft

The view

Me and Soren

We stopped off at a cute little village and looked around.  The whole area was just charming.

 I was a little worried about the ride back.  I was told it would take two hours by bike.  But after unloading at another little village, we met two girls on a moped who were going to Yangshuo.  They showed us a shortcut, so we got back in plenty of time, and saw some beautiful scenery as we rode. (Also some really bumpy road).

That night we had our cooking class.  Our teacher, Mona, took us to the market where everyone buys their food.  She introduced us to various vegetables that we'd be using in the class.  After that, we rode out to the adorable Yangshuo cooking school.  The class consisted of the seven of us and a couple from Belgium.  We made a eggplant, ginger dish; steamed pork stuffed mushrooms, pumpkin flower, and tofu; cashew chicken; a garlic green vegetable; and the Yangshuo delicacy Beer Fish.  It was all SUPER good.  And now we know how to cook awesome Chinese food.  I honestly can't say enough about the cooking class, so I'm not going to try.

In the Market

Our dinner table

The ingredients

Soren preparing his dishes

The finished product

That night was caught a bus back to Guilin and the next morning we flew back to Nanjing.  I felt my heart break as I left.  It was so beautiful and so fun.  A great way to finish up our time in China.