Discovering Yangshou

July 2, 2009 -- Justine

On our first full day in Yangshou, we rented bicycles and decided to spend a full day exploring the area. This would include bamboo rafting down the Yulong River, and exploring Water Cave -- enormous caves in the Yangshou mountains complete with mud baths and hot springs.

After an incredibly satisfying 'American Breakfast' of pancakes, eggs, and Muesli, we hopped on our rented bicycles and followed a guide out of town and into the country side to the Yulong River. The bike bells were essential to navigate through the throngs of people. Justine's bike was missing a bell so she had to yell "beeep-beeep-beeep" to get people to move. The air was heavy and humid and the landscape was lush and green and covered with rice fields and the beautiful Yangshou mountains. After biking for about a half hour, we left the roads and navigated puddle-filled dirt trails up to the Yulong.

When we arrived at the river, we loaded our bicycles into a pickup truck and boarded our bamboo rafts. This is maybe the Chinese version of the Italian gondolas, with a man in the back propelling us along using a long bamboo pole. We floated down the river for a couple of hours, singing, dancing (Leesa and Nat 'The Luckiest' came out and we couldn't resist), relaxing and soaking up the beauty of this place. Every half hour or so, we were pushed down a small waterfall which kept things interesting.

After rafting we reclaimed our bicycles and biked along the highway up to the Water Cave ticket booth. Biking and highway and China means half happy half terrified Canadian girls dodging tour buses, children, and livestock along the shoulder of the road. What can we say, it's all about the experience right? When we got to the ticket office we locked up our bikes and boarded a sketchy old bus that drove us down the most POT HOLED, rollercoaster of a road that we had ever experienced. I don't think my head had ever met the ceiling of a bus before, but there's a first for everything. When we arrived at the caves, we boarded small wooden boats in group of eight and headed toward an opening where the mountain met the water that felt like it was maybe as tall as my grade school ruler. We flattened ourselves against the seats of the boat and headed into the caves. At first, all I could think about was "Please God, no earthquakes today. I am NOT Angelina Jolie. Let's keep the tomb raider bit out of today's adventures." When the caves expanded and we could sit up again I think all of us were feeling better. The caverns were beautiful full of colourful stalactites and running water (like it was constantly raining in the caves) but the REAL treat was our tour guide, George, who lead us proudly through the caves for about two hours to point out what the different rock formations looked like.

"Every beautiful girl! Every beautiful girl! You look here! You see this rock? This looks like a big ice cream. Every beautiful girl! This is the biggest ice cream you ever see!" .... and so it went.... for hours. Even though there was about a dozen other people on the tour, George was focused on us the entire time, and we feighned polite interest in every, single, rock, shape, he pointed out: The young girl in the long dress flying, the mother holding her child in her arms, the shooting star, the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall, monkeys on a mountain? Jeeeze George, with sights like these we were wondering why we would ever need to travel anywhere else!

Finally George set us free at a large waterfall in the cave and Lisa and I (justine) almost killed feet trying to walk across it. We were then lead back to the mud baths where we willingly covered ourselves in nasty gooey cave mud. None of us were that jazzed about having to clean mud out of our ears for days, so we were more pumped to visit the hot springs. HEAVEN! It felt like the hot tub relaxation we had been craving all week.

We left the cave starving, only to realize we had forgotten about lunch and it was now late afternoon. We biked back to Yangshou and indulged in incredible pizzas and sodas, then headed back to the hostel for a low key evening. Catalina and I decided to explore Yangshou and visited the night market and the touristy parts of town... all pretty standard China.

It was a fantastic day in Yangshou and we are looking forward to our final day here tomorrow before heading to KL/Singapore.

PS My Bag was located and made it back to me!!! Great success China! Wooooo!