YANGSHOU - CHINA

Braced for chaos and confusion, I finally left Hong Kong after a more than adequate stay and made the 3 hour journey through the 'New territories' to the transportation hub of Guangzhou in the far south of China. Unfortunately I quickly discovered that Guangzhou is really just another big city in China, a commercial and industrial hub with lots of buildings which had been fairly recently constructed but in total chaos. I even found it somewhat depressing as the whole place was just a construction site. Thankfully I managed to befriend some friendly people from Hong Kong, who helped me find out where I needed to go to get a bus and after changing some money and sorting out other stuff, they even took me with them to get some lunch (I was starving). It was great to meet such lovely people and they really were so kind to me, offering to pay for lunch and explaining what all the crazy foodstuffs were about.

After lunch I took a taxi to the train staion, leaving myself with what I thought was sufficient time to buy a ticket and get myself out of the city. The taxi ride there was quite an adventure and I found that the pedestrian is really the king of the road in china as there is no way to move thousands of people walking in the street. This did not however stop the taxi driver from beeping his horn incessantly for the entire journey. Despite numerous warnings to avoid travel during the week long holidays of National week, I found myself amidst a throng of travellers all vying for precious seats on train and busses bound for various destinations in China. Thankfully I somehow managed to extracate myself from this mess (although not without complication) and with the help of about 10 different people and after asking about 100 more, I managed to buy a bus ticket to my intended destination, Yangshou. Given that I had nothing to do in Guangzhou, I spent the 6 hours waiting for my bus, just playing Sudoku... fun times !!!

The journey to Yangshou was quite horrendous and I got little to no sleep, after a while just giving up and trying to take in some of the scenery. Following an early morning arrival to Yangshou, I checked into a hostel, grabbed some breakfast and then embarked on a day of biking with Omar (Ethiopia) and Luis (Mexico) whom I had met on the bus from Guangzhou. Our group also included 2 chinese girls who wanted to pracitce their english (although they seemed to spend alot of the day speaking with each other in Chinese... which none of us quite understood).

The scenery around Yangshou was quite amazing and very similar to that which I had observed around Vinales in Cuba. Thankfully the weather was great if a little warm and on our bikes we were able to take in some of the country side. Along the way I managed to sustain a number of injuries including cuts from generally being a maniac and also a massive bruise on my upper thigh as a result of me falling down a ditch whilst attempting to... take a photo of course ! (It didn't even turn out to be a good photo which was a little annoying). After an hour or so of riding, we were joined by Abrahm (Holland) who was taking a similar route to us and whom had unfortunately paid out for a rather useless tourguide who wanted to go home and sleep rather than show Abrahm around.

We made our way to Moon Hill and after a steep climb were treated to some great views of the surrounding landscape. Over the course of the day we also passed a number of rivers, all filled with bamboo rafts carrying mainly chinese tourists around the place.

Unfortunately however, this first day of activities was pretty much the extent to which I saw and experienced the region around Yangshou, which is a pity because I think there was certainly plenty more to see including a number of interesting villages along the Li River. Given that the town was bustling with tourists and foreigners living in different parts of china but on vacation for a few days in Yangshou, I spent the majority of my time in Yanghsou socialising and having a good time. I justified this by the fact that it was probably the first time since Sout America that I had really embarked on such a period of disorderly behaviour.

But bloody hell !!! It was absolute chaos. Following our day of biking, a group of us assembled outside one of the streetside bars/cafes and enjoyed a number of cheap, cold beers (just what the doctor ordered). Following this we frequented a number of bars and eventually made our way home (all except Luis, who had drunken so much, including some nasty chinese 'vodka' that he couldn't remember where his hotel was and was as such taken to spare bed in Abrahms room). However, this was probably the most tame night of our stay in the city.

The following night, after not having achieved a great deal during the day, we found ourselves back in the same place for more beers, after which I tried my hand at fortune telling. You see, one of the residents in Yangshou was an albino chinese man, whom made his living as a kind of oracle and given that his appearance and dress was so different to anyone else in the town, the chinese people seemed to just accept him as divine. Not to be outdone by my 'brother' as he was affectionately termed, I copied some chinese characters from his sign and also transcribed "I am the Oracle" in english and placed this sign on my forehead. Within a few minutes I was reading the palms of numerous passers by and getting a fair bit of attention, although the novelty soon wore off as I had to actually make up stories for my clients and received nothing in return !!!

Following these shennanigans, a group of us made our way to an underwear party at one of the bars down the road. Had I not consumed more than my fair share of beer, I would definitely not have been seen within 100 metres of such a party, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Having walked in the door, I was attacked by a number of the club patrons and within a few seconds all of my clothes had dissapeared. I set about continuing my state of intoxication and then enjoyed meeting a tonne of cool people, dancing around and generally making a fool of myself. Meanwhile, outside the chinese passers by thought this idea of people getting around in their underwear was hilarious and were taking heaps of photos of us competely smashed off our heads. As such, I may or may not have organised a group of us to go outside and moon them... which was bloody hillarious.

Over the course of the night I posed for numerous photos with my 'samurai sword' (which turned out just to be a green stick!!!) so there must be a few hundred photos of me (and my butt) on cameras all around china. Later on, whilst performing a quick dash up the street I was also got spoken to by the police for public nudity (after mooning the dude in the street selling hot dogs) but didn't believe the policeman was for real (he only had a small red card saying police and wasn't even wearing a uniform !) and later on managed to lose one of my shoes which I was actually pretty annoyed about the next day. Enough said about this party and my time in Yangshou, I will let the photos do the talking.

Photos 1-4: Views of Yangshou across one of the lakes in the city centre.
Photos 5-11: Shots of the countryside surrounding the city.
Photo 12: Members of the biking expedition.
Photo 13: Comorant fisherman posing for photos (their more prominent source of income).
Photos 14&15: More views of the river and bamboo rafts.
Photos 16-31: Nightlife festivities over the course of my stay (no explanations required).