Around the World: Yangshuo

This was an amazing trip! We left on Sept 29th right after class around 6 pm to catch our 8:15 flight. We took the Maglev Train from our house to Pudong City. The Maglev Train is that train that travels on magnets and goes up to 301km/hr or 187mph! It was exciting to see the city go by so fast. Our flight was delayed getting to Guilin by about an hour but we arrived at 11:45 PM.

From Guilin we took the hotel taxi to Yangshuo, a hour drive.

We arrived at the Drangon River INN around 1am. The hotel was really nice. There were five us traveling together so we all got one room. There were three beds in the room so it was manageable.

The Hotel Entrance Above; Our room below

The next morning we rented bikes from the hotel and biked into the city, it took about 30 mins to bike to town. The town is very large but has a little feel. The tallest building is probably about 5 stories. It has a lot of bars and restaurants. The main street is called West Street. At the end of West street you can find a large market where they sell a lot of things from silk scarfs to masks.

My bike above; Mountains of Yangshuo below

On Thursday we went into the caves of Yanghuo. This was a very exciting experience for all of us. We first had to board a bus into the village where the caves were located. The village was in a rural area where there were no paved roads, kids playing in trash, chickens roaming the streets and little homes scattered throughout the street. Once we got to the entrance of the cave we had to hop into a boat in order to enter the cave. We had to lay down in the boat since the cave ceiling was so low. There was probably about 3 feet between the water and the top of the cave..... Once we were in the cave, our guide took us for a tour of the cave. This cave was massive! It took about an hour to tour the cave. We swam in a freshwater pool, in a mud pool and relaxed in the hot springs all in the cave.

Thursday was the worst night since 3 out of the 5 of us became sick. We are not sure what caused us to get sick but everyone was throwing up all night long, including me. We only had one bathroom which made the night even worse. We slept the whole next day since none of us could sleep the night before, but we managed to go to town for dinner.

It was China's National Holiday so the streets were packed with people from all over China and there were a lot of international people as well. There were Chinese flags waving everywhere and lanterns floating into the sky.

On Saturday, our last day, we went white water rafting! This was the best part of the trip. We had to travel about an hour and half away from Yangshuo to get to the river. I met someone on the bus from Orange County as well and we had mutual friends. I am meeting up with her in Shanghai soon. Once we got to the top of the river we had to put knee pads, elbow pads and a helmet on, I didn't know it was going to be this intense. We had to sit in a pool of water before they sent us down the river, this was one of the funniest moments of the trip. As we were sitting in the pool of water I was surround by about 75 other rafts, but in order to get the rafts down to the pool they would send them sliding down the hill. But the funny thing was that people were sitting were the rafts were hitting the water. All the asians would scream as the other rafts came rushing down the side of the hill, it reminded me of "Most Extreme Elimanation." One Asian guy who couldn't even speak English yelled, "Sh**!" as the raft came down the hill. Too funny.

The first drop was 13 meters then followed by a 7 m drop and a 5 m drop. It took about 1.5 hours to travel down the river. It was an amazing and an intense experience.

Picture taking from their website (I obviously didn't bring my camera)