Over Land From Hong Kong Back to Kunming:"The Finest Mountains and Waters Under Heaven"

Well, this post is a bit overdue, but I wanted to at least give a brief retelling of my trip through Southern China, from Hong Kong back to Kunming by land.  After the Fulbright Conference ended in mid-march, my friend Laura and I set out back into mainland China by bus, traveling from Hong Kong directly to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.  While the primary language in Guangdong is Cantonese, we didn't have any trouble getting by with our standard Mandarin.  The bus let us off after dark in downtown Guangzhou by a Hilton.  We checked the price, but it was far out of our budget.  So, we called around, and it seemed that most places were steeply priced compared to what we were used to in other Chinese cities (possibly due to the high volume of international business and trade conferences in the area).  We finally found a "cheaper" hostel south of the river, and cabbed it down there.

The next morning, we went to the bus station to buy overnight bus tickets to Guilin, a fabled city in Guangxi, Guangdong's provincial neighbor to the west.  We had the day to play, and we walked around a bit, met up with a friend of mine who was also staying in the area, got dim sum for lunch, and visited some sites.  Guangzhou was not exceptionally interesting, and we were glad we'd opted to only stay for one day.  That night, we returned to the bus station, and boarded a sleeper bus, traveling west into Guangxi Province.  The driver told us we would arrive in Guilin around 6:30am, and we tried to get some sleep on the narrow beds.

Around 6am, the bus stopped and everyone shuffled out.  We were told we'd arrived in Yangshuo, an hour or so south of Guilin, and where we'd intended to go after Guilin.  So, we discussed it, and decided to switch our itinerary around a bit, first spending time in Yangshuo.  We checked into a cheap hotel, and rested a bit more till the sun came up.  After a light breakfast of buns and dumplings, we rented bikes and set out into the countryside.  Yangshuo is known for its astounding karst scenery (much like the scenery I encountered in Laos), split picturesquely by the peaceful Li River.  Telling many Chinese people that you're traveling to Guilin and Yangshuo elicits an envious reply.  In fact, there's a Chinese saying: "桂林山水甲天下，阳朔山水甲桂林。"（Guilin's mountains and waters are the finest under heaven, but Yangshuo's mountains and waters top Guilin's）.  China's 20 yuan bill even depicts a scene of the Li River in Yangshuo.

We rode out around the area taking photos, visiting sites, climbing Moon Hill (known for its moon-shaped hole), and riding some more.  With no real map or idea of where we were going, we kept asking locals for directions, and got lost a couple times.  The weather was slightly overcast, and not the ideal for a visit to Yangshuo, but it was still quite an enjoyable day.  Flat roads by tourist attractions gave way to winding roads through vast open spaces between imposing karst cliffs, and then the Li River.  Flat bamboo rafts floated by carrying fishermen, cows grazed the fields, and everything seemed picture-worthy.  We stopped by a chicken farm, and the owner came out to ask us how many chickens we wanted to buy.  (We refrained.)  At one point, the road led right to the edge of the river, continuing on the opposite side, and a local helped us cross and bring our bikes across by raft.

By the time we made it back into town we'd ridden about 40km, and were fairly tired.  We walked around a bit, had dinner, and went to bed, catching a bus north to Guilin the next morning.  Guilin is an interesting city, but not necessarily deserving the above Chinese saying.  We explored, had some snacks, visited a number of different sites, including twin pagodas, one made of copper, the tallest copper building in the world.  For dinner, we had Guilin snails (a traditional dish).  The first one I went for turned out to be pregnant with lots of gritty little baby snails.  After that, Laura refused to eat any more than the foot of each snail.  We finished most of them, and explored some more.  The next day we visited the Longsheng (Dragon's Backbone) Rice Terraces.  I'd visited the Yuanyang rice terraces in southern Yunnan with Ariane, but it had been extremely foggy, and the views had been limited.  Fortunately, our day in Longsheng was a sun-filled one, and we climbed through the terraced hills above the quaint villages, feeling like we'd somehow stumbled out of our world and into the Shire of Hobbit acclaim.

After our day in Longsheng, we returned to Guilin and arranged train tickets back to Kunming.  Lonely Planet listed the travel time as 8 hours, and the ticket salesman told us the train departed at 4:30pm and arrived around 11:30.  We bought hard seat tickets, figuring 7 or 8 hours was not too bad a trip.  Later, however, after some online research, I realized that the train did indeed arrive around 11:30... the next morning!  The 8 hours that Lonely Planet listed had been a typo, and should have actually said "18 hours".  I was a bit concerned, and almost didn't even tell Laura about my realization.  Finally, however, I decided I had to, and with a couple hours left till our train was scheduled to depart, we headed to the station to try to switch our tickets to hard sleepers.  They were sold out.

A man approached us and offered us hard tickets, but we were very skeptical.  A bit desperate, however, we followed him to his tourist office, and made him sign a contract saying the tickets were real.  We didn't have a problem, and made it on the train, 18 hours back to Kunming.

I've left out a lot of details for the sake of brevity, but I've also posted photos.  I also be following this post up with some more recent events.