Bamboozled.

When in China, be sure to follow the wise words of anyone who says "local guide". We started out our Thursday morning by getting mangoes and strawberries for breakfast and heading out to the countryside on motorbikes. We had planned to hike Moon Hill, a beautiful archway atop a karst, which is where we met Mama Moon. Mama Moon is a spunky lady who has to be at least 70 years old, who advertised herself as a "local guide" who could get us entry tickets for a "local price" and show us the "local trail". We would be getting a 75% discount on the price, which is hard to argue with. Turns out the local way is parking our motor scooters in the forest, climbing over a mossy stone wall, and crawling through the overgrown bamboo on a muddy and very obviously human made pathway in the mud. In between shushing us to be quiet and having us duck down so we wouldn't be seen, Mama Moon kept assuring us we were on the right path. Eventually, we did meet up with the paved walkway and made it to the top for some spectacular views. It was only awkward when 11 sweaty and muddy Americans clamored on the paved path in front of some rather shocked Europeans who had no idea where we had emerged from. Thanks, Mama Moon. 

Bamboo is the only way to travel. 

The rest of the afternoon was idyllically cruising the countryside on our little motor scooters. We took the same scenic route we found on the bikes, and made it to the same cafe for more mango sorbet and the chance to maybe float on bamboo rafts. Call it creatures of habit, but the mango sorbet and the views make it a hard place to only visit once. The rafts weren't running that day, so we ordered a leisurely lunch, but the minute we had finished, we saw someone untying the rafts to float on the river. We took our chance; this whole trip, the river had been too high to even think about rafting it. While not being able to raft all week, it also meant we were the only rafts on the water that afternoon. I highly recommend slowly floating the river being gently paddled by a man wielding a huge bamboo stick as you gaze up the catawampus mountains carpeted in green around you. It's lovely. 

Our last remaining days in Yangshuo were spent soaking up the scenery by finding little hikes and pathways to wander, riding through the countryside on bikes and motor scooters, and again on foot while munching on mangoes and those egg crepes I've come to love. Evenings were spent swapping stories in the many cafes that line the offshoots of West Street, and considering how much tea is too much tea to bring home for friends and family. One afternoon was spent doing a cooking class with the Cloud 9 restaurant; Hannah and I myself joined two French women and the restaurant's head chef for a market tour and then a tutorial on how to make 4 or 5 dishes.  The lack of photos is only because we were instructed to keep cameras and phones away while we strolled through the enormous market and later cooked our meal. The vegetables were beautiful; deep plum eggplants neighbored piles of lotus roots and bamboo shoots while huge bags of cumin perfumed the air. Baskets of eggs were precariously stacked to be inspected by those interested; teeny speckled quail eggs, soft mint and beige chicken eggs and larger duck eggs all piled high to be admired. I could talk all day about the produce, though I intentionally skipped out on the butcher block. However, detour didn't save me from spying the bags of turtles, bins of eels, and buckets of snails that rimmed the entrance. 

(Rule breaker; impromptu market shot). 

The kitchen was a long room framed by windows that overlooked the city. Each station was lined with well loved woks and containers of seasoning staples like salt, sesame oil, garlic  ginger, black vinegar and oyster sauced. First up was a mushroom and scallion stuffed and steamed dumplings, then spicy green beans sautéed with numbing sichuan, a stir fry of Chinese lettuce root and carrots, and little parcels of deep fried egg plant stuffed with the remaining dumpling mixture. While the French women split their meals with their interpreter and had extra to take home in a takeaway box, Hannah and I had no problem polishing off the delicious meal. The package included a little print off of the recipes, meaning I'll be recreating the meal as best I can when it comes time to go back home. 

Don't be fooled by the print on the currency; there are about 172,192 bamboo rafts in that river if the 20 yuan note wasn't in the way. 

Before leaving Yangshuo, we had to get a photo by the so called "20 yuan shot", the scenic stretch of the Li River that appears on the back of the 20 yuan note. True to the TripAdvisor review, after you will come to despise the word bamboo after your visit. The entire walk through dusty streets lined with people selling fruit and little fish in tiny bags, I was bombarded with about a thousand offers for a ride down the river on a bamboo raft. Dozens of tiny women shouted "Bamboo! Bamboo!" as we all made our way down to the river and tried not to melt in the scorching sun. On our walk back to the bus, we were chased down by one last woman shouting "Bamboo, bamboo!". I would had brushed her off as just another vendor, but I recognized that spunky grin anywhere- Mama Moon had come to the neighboring city Pinxing to work her "local guide" magic. True to form, she tried to have us spend the afternoon hiking up a karst to see the view from a bird's eye perspective, telling us we could get in "no charge, just for locals!". Sadly, we had a bus to catch, and couldn't fit it in. I fully expect to see Mama Moon sneaking tourists onto the Great Wall next month. Until then, it was a bumpy bus ride before catching a tuk-tuk, then another coach to Guilin, where a bullet train took us to Liuzhou and a sleeper train (full post on THOSE adventures to come) and a taxi before arriving in Zhangjiajie; the Avatar Mountains. 

Tie on Life Jackets.

Be warned; bakeries in China can be your best friend or be the stuff of nightmares. We frequent bakeries more than I thought while vacationing, because bread makes a quick and packable lunch when you are planning on being in the jungle, riverside all day long. But more on the duality of bakeries;They can be your best friend because cutely packaged milk drinks are a delicious combo of coconut and some other milk like beverage, but are also bringers of terrible news because of two things; meat floss and red bean. Meat floss is the bane of Chinese food. It's a stringy substance that lurks inside rolls and under crepes. It's disgusting and I have no idea why it's in everything. Red bean is also another bringer of disappointment. The stuff looks like raisins, chocolate chips, and cinnamon, meaning you can literally eat disappointment. You think you are biting into raisin bread, or a roll filled with chocolate but nope. There are beans in your bread. You are eating bean bread. It's worse than thinking you grabbed a chocolate chip cookie and instead find out it's a raisin cookie. 

However, I can't be too sad because even when I have to put on a still wet swimsuit and having a breakfast of bean bread because today is set up to be an incredible adventure. Yesterday, we had booked tickets to go river drifting. Basically, you get stuffed into a blow up raft and placed in a holding tank until the dam breaks and you careen down a jungly river path, slamming into rock walls and splashing into little waterfalls and falling down huge drop offs. Hannah was our saving grace and pulled out the camp games while we waited and while we made the hour or so drive up the river. We climbed higher and high into the overgrown mountains before getting off and locking up valuables, changing into swimsuits and taking a very chilly bus ride to the top of the mountain. I'm thinking the open air shuttle would have been really gorgeous in the summer time, but it made the ride a bit chilly considering I was covered in goosebumps and it was raining. Did I mention that it was raining? Good thing we were planning on getting soaked via the coursing river. 

At the end of our nippy shuttle ride, a pile of maybe not that secure helmets and life vests that you just tie on were supplied. I secured my "life vest" with a few bunny eared bows and snapped on a helmet that didn't feel that heavy and climbed into an inflatable raft to be launched down waterfalls. Oh, China. It was terrifying and awesome and was also in the middle of the most beautiful jungle. Hannah and I screamed and laughed and got so so so so wet especially when our raft got stuck under this waterfall and a man with a camera had to pull us out and back on course. I especially liked not being able to see what our next drop looked like when; the biggest falls were always preceded with a dam like area, where you floated lazily until the gentle current pulled you closer to the man with the huge bamboo pool guided your raft to the mouth of an enormous drop. It was incredible. To make it even better, certain sections were bookended by orange groves giving the rain scented air a "Soarin' Over California" twist. To really top things off, on the very last drop the clouds above us poured rain. It was the hardest rainfall I've ever been in and it was awesome. Hannah and I tossed our hands in the air and watched enormous drops plop into the coursing river before we were fished out to board the shuttle back down to the base. 

Again, excuse the photo quality. A picture of a picture can't really capture the whole "I'm having so much fun but I feel like I should have signed some sort of waiver before doing this" face as well as I'd like. 

A hot shower and dinner at West Street (get the banana crumble at the Minority Cafe!) capped off Tuesday's adventure, and only whetted our appetite for what Wednesday held. I skipped out on the bean bread and instead opted for a massive mango breakfast before delving into the real countryside of Yangshuo.  I can't imagine getting sick of this view...ever. The group of us turned down a deserted country path, attempting to get to the area of the river where you can ride bamboo rafts. So off we went. Someone had a speaker hooked up to their bike, playing some Rogue Wave as we pedaled through a postcard. We ended up finding the place, but there would be no rafting today; all of the rain we had enjoyed this week had flooded the river, making it too deep to raft in. In fact, it made the sidewalks too flooded to even bike on, though we did have fun pedaling through calf deep river water. 

I loved the biking and swimming combo, by my red-haired friend was less amused: See photo.

Naturally, the next option is to find a large bridge to jump off of, so we took the path less traveled buy after purchasing fresh flower crowns from a crooked toothed woman and a few spears of pineapple to fuel our biking. Things really got remote from that point. We biked for stretches down windy roads between karsts carpeted with dense greenery. When we did pass through civilization, we quietly coasted through tiny whitewashed villages with tile roofs, where woman on teeny wooden stools shelled peas or did the wash. Traffic consisted of a farmer walking his geese to another flooded rice field, or a pair of oxen lazily waltzing across the bumpy road. 

(I have about 13,304,127 pictures of this place). 

The bike ride had to come to an end, but it was a very happy ending indeed. Mango sorbet riverside and a lunch of egg friend noodles is pretty lovely way to spend the afternoon. Although I would have loved to bike the same route home, we wanted to ride home in the remaining daylight which meant taking the highway. I'm impressed my rented beach cruiser handled the downhill-under-construction-and-bus-studded highways to well- other people's cruisers popped tires and had other difficulties, but eventually we all made it back to West Street for sandwiches (oh, how we have missed sandwiches sans meat floss). I munched on a bowl of fresh cut watermelon while I walked back to the hostel and sorted out plans for tomorrow; we're planning on doing the same itinerary, but this time atop motorbikes. 

Mud Baths.

We had a good run in Guilin, but next on the agenda was Yangshuo, an hour by bumpy bus through the most magical karst formations. Not only are karst formations fun to say, they are also incredibly gorgeous to stare at and make you wonder how nature can be so beautiful. I can't get enough of these so called Dr. Seuss Mountains. The views certainly made the bus ride to go by quickly, and soon we were bombarded by all kinds of shuttle and taxi drivers the minute we arrived in the bus station, all of them wanting to take a group of very tired Americans and their luggage to wherever they needed to go into the small city. Faced with dozens of choices, we obviously, we rode with the man who had the longest hairs growing out of the mole on his neck. I cannot make this stuff up; I would go into further detail but I would risk losing my lunch, which was a feast full of pineapple and these egg crepes I adore, so I'll spare you the details. 

I never was brace enough to eat one of the skewered fish,
but I love those egg crepes sooooo much. 

Mr. Mole got us to the Unique Theme Bamboo Hostel just fine, except for the fact that our hostel was impossible to see from the street because you had to slip down a moss lined alleyway through someone's neighborhood to find it. So yes, it was a short taxi ride but a long hunt to actually find the hostel, but we got there just fine. By the way, the Unique Theme Bamboo Hostel has less bamboo than you would think and more painted murals of minions dressed up as superheroes than you would hope, but that's home for the next week or so. It does, however, allow you to rent bikes for what amounts to be about a dollar fifty for the whole day, so you can bet that was first on the to do list. 

This city was made for biking; wide bike paths parallel the main road that idyllically wind through the jungly countryside, bookended by most magnificent karst formations. It really was perfection to feel that hot humid air float your hair back as you pedal through paradise. We all snagged lunch at a roadside stand where I discovered my Yangshuo staple food; a pastry like crepe that's cooked and slapped on top of an egg that's fried. Wrap it up with wilted lettuce and smear liberally with spicy ketchup and you're golden. Now, adding a spear of freshly cut pineapple or a whole as dessert, and you have the only meal you want to eat for the next 5 days. 

As if riding bikes through an incredibly green and stunning countryside and eating your weight in pineapple and mangoes isn't your idea of fun, stop by mud caves for a swim. Buy tickets from a lady who promises you the local price which includes a tour of the cave, a swim in mud (more details to come) and a soak in the natural hot springs. Yes, please. What wasn't included was the hundreds of pictures everyone took of a bunch of Americans walking around in a cave wearing minimal clothing. We had all dressed in swimsuits, ready to swim in gooey mud, while 99% of everyone else was there to just walk around a cave, so yes. We stood out more than usual. The cave was cool, but the mud was soooooo rad. Obviously you start out by getting completely covered by taking the stone slide. It's a bumpy ride down, but you splash directly into thigh high mud which is the strangest sensation. It was the most bizarre feeling to be swimming in MUD. You sort of floated in the thick and cold sludge while your toes squelched at the bottom. Oh, and it got EVERYWHERE. It was also super fun to just float around in. If you laid on your back, the dense liquid held you up, like a gigantic puddle of thick chocolate pudding. It also made your hair feel crazy thick, and now I wonder if I could recreate the sensation by showering in pudding (an experiment I have yet to try, but I'll keep you all posted). A photographer stayed to get some shots of the group to be purchased afterward, but I think he cut his time short because the mud is very slippery and we were having too much fun splashing it into each other's eyes to be too bothered by a photo session. It was crazy fun to swim in but not so great to shower off. 

This hopefully isn't the closest I get to swimming in actual chocolate (please forgive the photo quality). 

Luckily, our ticket allowed us to soak in the hot springs for as long as we wanted to, which grossly helped get the remainder of the mud off. Those hot springs were magical after the chilly swim in the mud. To top off our day we paid a little extra to soak our feet in kissing fish infested waters. Hands down, the most unique spa day I've ever experienced.

I want this to be my actual life, not just my vacation one. 

The bike ride back was super magical, stopping to snag sugar cane or coconuts as a post-spa snack and gawking at the scenery. It's a good thing these mountains are harder to see at night or I would have kept riding. I made sure to shower off the remaining mud at the hostel before dinner, but I'm pretty sure I'll rubbing off mud for days to come. Dinner was up on West Street, a large, bustling street crammed with shopping and food. There were laser demonstrations and vendors selling octopus on sticks, sesame candies being smashed with hammers, and calligraphy pens that wrote with "disappearing ink". In other words, too many things to take in on an empty stomach. Hannah and I found a little Muslim noodle stand on a neighboring alleyway, and pledged to explore West Street when hanger wasn't quickly approaching. Day one in Yangshuo was a complete success, and I'm already thrilled to see what the rest of this week holds.