Adventures in Guangzhou!

Besides Diana, I also found out that my friend Boudy is taking off as well. He was involved in a business deal gone sour and decided that he had had enough. I am very sorry to see him leave as well but I hope that his future will provide greener pastures. He had been struggling to adapt to Guangzhou after his lavish Dubai lifestyle and I'm just not sure it ever really set in. I can only hope that we stay in touch.

Last night I also remembered that my friend Anthony, a PhD candidate doing research here on NGOs will also be gone by the time I get back into town. Anthony is a fascinating guy to speak with and never ceases to have a smile and an astute comment for every situation. His work here is both interesting and noteworthy for the causes he has sought out, and I sincerely hope he lands a great professorship at the school of his choice.

An even bigger blow is the departure of my friend Meggie. She is about to finish up here at her international school and she is homeward-bound to Taiwan. With plans of clinical psych research, I know she will be happy and busy, but I sure will miss her presence here. With Steven also taking off in a month, Guangzhou is going to be radically different next year. I will have a new roommate. Kelly will have a new roommate. There will be a whole new slew of foreigners around, though I will probably never meet most of them. At this point it all seems too surreal to anticipate so I guess I'll just let the future come in time.

Kelly, Diana, Diana's little brother and I had a small exit of our own Thursday, as we headed off for some sightseeing in Yangshuo, a small backpackers haven in the northern section of Guangxi province. I was weary of bus travel given my 24 hour busride during spring festival, but this being off-peak travel season, I hoped it would be better. This time we left from the bus station next to the train station and I was pleasantly surprised--there was decent lighting, a few signs, and it wasn't oppresively hot.

Alas, it was too good to be true. As we sat down to wait for the coach, we began to see huge roaches crawling around. Oh well. Just another day of travel in China! Our bus was almost on time which I thought was a good omen and as we stepped on to get seats, we were all impressed. It must have been a very new bus because it still had that new leather smell to it. It was sparkling clean and not even close to full so we grabbed seats towards the back and tried to get comfortable.

Unfortunately looks can be deceiving once again because though the seats were comfortable, the bus had some serious temperature issues. It seemed to have only two settings: on, which meant frigid air blasting out of the vents, or off, which meant a huge sweatfest. The driver did his best to regulate on and off throughout the night but all of us had major problems sleeping, constantly waking up either drenched in sweat or completely freezing. There were also some major bumps that caused Kelly and Diana to cling for dear life on to the seats, but we did manage to stay upright and by 9am, we arrived in town.

First impressions: After hearing so much about Yangshuo I had high expectations so that might account for a bit of my letdown. I'm lucky enough to have done quite a bit of traveling and I felt like it was a bigger, more touristed version of Dali in Yunnan Province. It was nice, but it just seemed a little bit fake, a little bit forced. Regardless, I was very happy to be out in the fresh air and we started off in search of beds and food.

The only street that you really need to know in Yangshuo is Xi Jie, or West Street. It's basically a long stretch with different hostels, guest houses, cafes, bars, and souvenir shops. We perused around and bargained for rooms and, thanks to Diana's excellent bargaining, ended up with great rooms right off of Xi Jie that had views of the Li River. We dropped our bags and hunted down some breakfast.

One of the funny things about these backpacker towns is that they all claim to have western style breakfasts, which they do, but with distinctly Chinese flavor. I ordered a vegetable omellete which was quite tasty, but a heckuva lot different than an omellete I'd make. It was basically a circular piece of scrambled egg folded over stir-fried Chinese vegetables. Good, but definitely not authentic. In like manner, the banana pancake was more or less a crepe with a piece of banana thrown on top. The bacon was more like ham. Regardless, it all tasted good and we were off to start the adventure.