Vague Chinese Holiday Makes Way for Grimy Asian Adventure

The first week of October is known as National Holiday.  I know nothing about this other than the entire country has off for a week and everyone either goes to their hometown or to a tourist attraction.  Because my hometown is over 8,000 miles away, I opted to travel to a Chinese city called Yangshuo.  It is known for its gorgeous and unusual landscape of limestone mountains with the Li River cutting through the city.

After a 10 hour ride on a sleeper bus, we arrived in Yangshuo at 5am and navigated ourselves to the grimiest hostel I've ever stayed in.  It doubled as the home of the owner and his entire family (brother, sister, sister-in-law, niece, mother and other unidentified family members).

We all fell in love with housemate, Ruby, though she also acted as an early morning alarm clock.

Our first trip was down (or up) the Li River on a bamboo raft.  The first half was delightful as we admired the beautiful scenery and attempted to chat with our raft driver in Chinese.  The second half was awkward because Sean and I had refused to look at or purchase the photos that were taken of us going down a little ramp that our driver surely received a cut of.

Lady was all smiles until we didn't want to buy the pictures

Every lunch and dinner was spent on the main street in Yangshuo called West Street.  It was full of both Western and Chinese restaurants, bars, shops and carts selling handmade goods.  The hours between 6pm and 10pm reminded me of Venice in the summer or when I saw Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Spectrum when I was 14 and I was at the very front in general admission and I thought I was going to die from the sea of people.  I did make good purchases of silk pashminas and handmade jewelry and bargained a T-shirt from 95 kuai ($15) to 30 kuai ($5).

West Street by day

West Street by night

Day 2:  we were awakened at 4:40am by the owner's brother telling us we had to leave right away in order to make it to the motorized bamboo raft ride.  We were so early the boat drivers weren't even there.  The scenery was beautiful, but it was difficult to enjoy because of the obnoxious hour and cold temperatures.

Day 3:  it poured all day.  We didn't even leave the room.

Final Day:  rode bikes to Moon Hill Cave where we striped down to our undergarments and some to nothing! and played in both a mud pool and a hot spring.  Pinnacle of griminess.

Those helmets came in handy

Overall, it was an experience to see another part of China and a beautiful part of the world.  I think the following picture sums up what National Holiday means to me: