YangShou (the home of the tout)

Well my introduction to Yangshou was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. I arrived pretty late about 10:00 or so and basically got badged by a middle aged women and a young bloke. Ended up giving in and went to see there hotel. Got a bargain to be honest 50 yuan for a double room but it didnt stop there.

Yangshou is famous because it has these crazy hills (see photo) - not really sure how they formed as the guy who gave the tour couldnt speak english. But I reckon it was glacial... (wouldnt put money on my thoughts..). Anyway got the tour at what I thought was a bargain of 150 ... Robert the owner of Golden Prosperus Hotel started at 210. Anyway it wasnt a bargain and I could have got the tour for 40... ouch!
Ah well you win some and you lose some but of course those that know me, know that the fight isnt finished yet. I shall be getting revenge in a very unbuddist way, but also at least then others wont get ripped off either... which will be the aim of my revenge.

So winding forward and forgetting the Golden Prosperus Hotel incident, I was escorted on the back of Roberts bike to the start of the tour. Whilst I was being escorted Robert, Rob or Robbing Thieving **stard as I like to call him tried to sell me a cave tour again at the bargain of 150 and also suggested that we could go out and pick up some girls. How was that he put it? Oh yeah for some fu*ky, fu*ky.. made me laugh... and no doubt at a bargain price too!

So the boat cruise was amazing, the hills are incredible - never seen anything like it just really steep mounds coming straight of the ground... no sign of earthquakes or anything like that... the scenary was breath taking and also it was cool cause met my first westerners for a while too. Rick and Claire were on their way back from living in Australia to get married in the UK. Good luck you two, anyway it was good fun and they were a sound bunch.

After the cruise we ended up meeting up for beer fish.. which is basically beer and fish in a big wok. The flavours are amazing and it got pretty spicy but definately worth going for .. the restaurant even lets you pick your own fish!!

I moved to another guesthouse called Lisa's which was pretty nice and even more of a steal than the Golden ... hotel.. nice atmosphere with the obligotory guitars playing - everyone sat around chatting.

I also had a few problems with trying to get out of Yangshou and ended up having to book a flight and stay an extra day.. not really too much of a problem as it would allow me to get a bit of exercise and go for a bike ride. The airplane ticket was a bit more pricey at 800 yuan instead of a 24hr train/bus journey for 220 .. but then it did take 1 hr 30mins. Also I would be able to catch my friend Kate (who is one part of the infamous Kate and Joe) in Lijiang.

So went out for the bike ride, on a bike that didnt really like to stop.. it did stop well for a while and then decided after I had ridden a while that it wasnt going to stop so easily. This made for some interesting bike, car, truck crash scenarios.. fortunately I didnt get involved in any.

Whats great about the bike is that you can go anywhere so I decided to find a place called Moon Hill - after leaving without a map and no idea of where Moon Hill was... I gave up and just started to ride down muddy tracks. Then you start to see the real China, going through the villages and seeing how everyone lives. It was amazing... I got lost a few times and the locals seemed to be quite amused about how I went past a few times... but it was great. I even raced one of these mad trucks which basically has an engine strapped to the front. (I will post a picture later on!). I was doing well and did end up overtaking it up a hill... though then realised that it was stopping at the top of the hill..

Anyway I rushed back to get the plane from Guilin which is an hours bus journey from YangShou and made it with about 4 mins to spare.

Got a taxi in Guilin to the airport after a bit of searching for a bus.. made it to the check-in desk with 1 min to spare and on to the plane without a tanoy call. (Mr B and Mr M - you'd have been impressed!).

... then it was off to Kumming...