Lazy days in Yangshuo

The China blitzkrieg is almost over so we decided to take it chill, unpack our bags and stay put for our last week. With its huge array of activities, developed tourist industry and amazing scenery, we chose Yangshuo – and we couldn’t have picked a better spot.

An immensely popular tourist village on the banks of the Li river, Yangshuo is best known for the karst rock formations (limestone monoliths as tall as a 60-story buildings) that dot the landscape. We settled into Monkey Jane’s, a hostel catering to western backpackers complete with family dinners, a rooftop bar and beer pong games late into the night. The feeling of having a “home” where we could share stories over cheap beers with people we weren’t saying goodbye to as soon as we met was surprisingly nice. With loads of stuff to do and plenty of folks to hang out with, we were never bored. By the end of our stay, we had gone on long bike rides through the picturesque landscape, crawled into a mud cave and saw a glorious sunrise from a hot air balloon. At night, we played beer pong (where my years of training in college served me well) and shot the shit with other travelers.

Western backpackers in China are an interesting bunch. Most people come to China not knowing what they will find and for those people that is the draw. When you go to Thailand or even India, despite being quite foreign, you more or less know what you are getting yourself into. In contrast, China has only been open to outsiders for a relatively short period and tourism is still in its infant stage. You are also dealing with a culture that in some ways discourages holding on to the past, while at the same time experiencing a growth unseen in recorded history. As a result, everything is changing so fast not even the guide books can keep up. This unpredictability tends to attract people who don’t fit any of the traveler molds out there – they have very open minds, don’t think they know everything there is to know and are willing to discuss everything from national socialism to the best clubs in Chengdu. In other words, our kind of people.

Yangshuo was the perfect cap off to China. We saw and did some of the coolest shit so far, and met awesome folks while experiencing backpacker culture for the first time on this journey. We are leaving China wanting to come back, but with its race towards modernization, it surely won’t be the same place we left.