Yang what?
Yangshuo fool.
No comprendo. You talking about Yan Can Cook?
Who has ever even heard of the name Yangshuo? What about Guilin? You’ve probably heard of Guilin before and associate it with the majestic mountains and karst scenery that is seen in so many Chinese paintings. But if you’ve never been, then you just won’t know. Guilin is a tourist trap where as Yangshuo is truly the land in which both ancient and modern artists write and marvel about.
During our last night in Guangzhou, we (my cousin, my cousin-in-law, Aston, and me) had a deep and personal talk about family and clash of cultures, in which we ended up staying up until about 4AM. And that began a week in which we would never sleep before 3AM. Our 3 alarm clocks woke us up at 6AM as we sloppily and hurriedly moved around to pack as our flight was at 920AM. Half awake and hungry, we hastily took the subway to the Guangzhou airport, which was super convenient because it drops you right inside the airport and will get you there in about 40 minutes.
Holy shit was I tired. If you ever travel with Aston, you will never go to sleep before 4AM. And the only way is…to get him piss-drunk so he’ll just flop onto bed and wake up hella late the next morning. JK JK, he’ll provide some good (and sometimes awkward) conversations, but I miss it. But yeah, we basically KTFO’d on that 1 hour plane ride to the Guilin…
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| Guilin Airport...built in 1600. |
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| Ticket stand - on our way to Yangshuo. |
Now the Guilin airport probably isn’t the smallest airport in the world but it’s pretty small and run-down. The baggage claim was probably made from Lego pieces and painted brown or something. Our plan was to go straight to Yangshuo from Guilin for about 3 days…Longji Rice Terraces for 1 day…and Guilin for 1 day. So we took the Airport shuttle from the airport (20yuan) to the Guilin railway station which took about 45 minutes. We then boarded a bus from Guilin to Yangshuo (25yuan). The thing about these buses which is both annoying and amazingly interesting at the same time is that they need to fill up the bus before departing to Yangshuo (and anywhere else). For example, they’ll just randomly drive around and stop at these random stops (in the middle of the streets some times) and people will just hop on (and hop off).
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| View from the rooftop bar atop our Hostel. |
So the next two hours was kind of a blur because I pretty much just knocked out. I read online that the bus ride from Guilin to Yangshuo would provide you with “priceless and imposing views of nature’s glory.” The only cool things I saw was a dog barking at a water buffalo and old men burning trash. Hmmmmmmmmm. Well all those “imposing views of nature’s glory” would come in a matter of hours.
We arrived at the Yangshuo bus station at around 230PM. As soon as we got off the bus, around 15 middle-aged women rushed and tussled to get to the front of the bus to await us. Now this kind of scene isn’t new to me as middle-aged women scuffle and brawl for me all the time, but they were actually just trying to sell us a hotel room. 不用啦! Favorite phrase to say in Yangshuo….”不用啦 (Do Not Need),” as there are people constantly bombarding you with a tour of the Lijiang river or “the best room in Yangshuo!” Nah…BU YAO LA…we already got Showbiz Inn fools (Aston, yamean?).
We booked a 6-bed dorm in Showbiz Inn for the next 3 nights and it would be the best decision we made on that trip. Showbiz Inn will forever be the “model” hostel in which I will compare all my other hostel visits against. It was probably the people I met at there, but it was storybook perfect in its own awkward kind of way. I seriously did not feel like I was on vacation until I stepped foot in that hostel and from that point on, Yangshuo would be a life-changer. OK, well I’m making it sound like I needed help or something but yeah…it was 3 mothertrucking fun-arse days and nights.
So…let me introduce to you the cast of Showbiz Inn…
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| Aston |
We have Aston Tsui who reigns from Dodgerville in the States and has been teaching English in Japan for the past two years. He is no longer a fatass Buddha and has lost a lot of weight. He brought a 10-pound band from Japan in an effort to stay in shape. He never used it once – failure. He isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind and sometimes he is too blunt and direct, but that is what makes him the way he is.
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| Erguotou |
“Erguotou.” This guy is a fucking character. The guy is about 25 years old and comes from Beijing. He’s currently in Yangshuo to take English classes, but I don’t think he’s ever attended one single class. I asked him the first night, “What are you studying here?” He responded, “I am here to study drinking.” We had a one hour long drunk conversation that contained about two phrases he kept repeating over and over again in his strong Beijing accent. He kept telling me that no matter where I am from, I am still Chinese and that we are brothers and if I ever needed a place to stay or anything in Beijing, he’d hook it up. And every 10 minutes or whenever there was an awkward silence, he would loudly say in his heavily-accented English, “WELCOME TO BEIJING” and shake my hand. WE’RE IN YANGSHUO FOOL LOL. LOVE THIS GUY. Also, his name is “erguotou” (Chinese white wine) because he kept trying to get me and Aston fucked up by buying us “erguotou.” He obviously failed…
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| 15-year old Kid |
Next we got this guy who looks like he’s about our age but in fact, he’s 15 years old. And he drinks and smokes and stays out at rooftop bars. Oh yeah, he’s also learning English but I don’t think he goes to class either. We later found out that his mother is 29 years old (which means his mother had him at the age of 14). Maybe that is why he is so messed up. But the funny thing is that…on the last night when we came back from dinner, there was this really cute girl that we bumped into going up to our room. She was on her way up to the rooftop bar and asked us (in this teasing/flirting manner) to go up and "hang out." We later found out that this “cutie" is in fact the 15 year old’s mother. HAHAHAHA.
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| Fen |
“AH FEN!” is this girl who works the front desk and also bartends at night. Now, she is quite the character and I still don’t know if the things she said was true or not, but I believe her. She’s basically this lesbian who has had three wives in the past and she says all of these things OPENLY…in CHINA. You would think homosexuality would be such a taboo subject in China (and it is), but she jokes around and flaunts it like she has no care in the world. She also loves talking and can go on talking forever (while we listen). Very interesting girl…don’t know if its bull or not, but I believe her.
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| Michael is the bald guy to the left. |
Michael is the Showbiz Inn Owner and we immediately made a connection with him because he is also Cantonese. He’s probably one of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet and very 老实(honest). He would stay up at the bar until 3-4AM with us just because we still wanted to drink and chill. He’s also married apparently his wife is one of the receptionist girls) and has a daughter. Although he is very cool on the outside, we don’t really know him from the inside.
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| Tong Tong |
And lastly, oh Tong Tong! She’s a 5’9 – 5’10, 22 year old model from Heilongjiang who moved to Shenzhen as a child. She is currently a model in Guangzhou for one of the biggest modeling agencies in China. She’s unique in the fact that her native tongue is Mandarin, but she can also understand and speak (mainly when she’s drunk) Cantonese as well. Her English is also not bad, but she is trying to work on it. What makes it interesting is that she can probably have whatever she wants because she is a model and is pretty smoking hot but yet, she is in Yangshuo by herself (to visit her friend Michael). We had a lot of talks and she told me as a child, she was constantly bullied and not accepted. Perfect example of the ugly duckling (she probably wasn’t ugly) turned Swan? Perhaps. Another thing is that even though she is a model, she is super sweet and caring. When we did bamboo rafting and kind of got ripped off (in her mind), she apologized to us and paid for the entire ride. She too is a mystery and too bad we only had a few days.
I know I've been rambling on and on about the people instead of the actual place, but it is the people that make up the "place." This applies for wherever your travels may take you...the people will make up your experience.
Now what did we actually do? I'll leave that up for another night...
