Warsaw to Bangkok

Approaching the city of Guilin (“gway-lin”) in the southern province of Guangxi, you begin to see the area’s distinctive landscape. “Karst formations” is the name given to them and I suppose if you’re a geologist you know what that means. They are limestone hills, pillars and cliffs that rise sharply from the earth out of nowhere. The difference between these and garden-variety hills is the degree of contrast between the karst and the surrounding landscape. They don’t “roll”, they just jut. It is sort of like take only the peaks from the top of a mountain range and dropping them over the prairies so that they are not close enough to touch each other, but are in close quarters nonetheless. They are mostly tree-covered, but at times are too steep for vegetation. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

The town of Yangshuo is a backpacker getaway and also supports a fair bit of mass tourism as well. Every other building is a hotel, and the downtown section is a series of pedestrian-only streets, hostels and cafes. There is a lot of competition, so rooms are cheap and you get a lot of amenities, like AC, free Internet, and cheap bike rentals. The food, though, is pricey, but you have many Western dishes. Decent if unspectacular pizzas are found all over town (they need to work on the crust – a little salt, pepper, herbs and cornmeal would go a long way). Apple pie, cheesecake and good coffee are all widely available. One place had gambas al ajillo (garlic prawns), which is one of my favourite dishes. It was a little simplistic compared with the version I make at home, but hit the spot. Pineapple chicken, Yangshuo beer fish, lemon cheesecake, and beef with onion are some of the things I had. The Chinese food comes in much greater variety in the south, too. I passed on the dog hotpot and braised bamboo rat, though. They still have quality standbys like sauteed spinach with garlic and wonton soup, too. The wonton soup in China is pretty much how I make it back home, with spices, herbs and veggies, as opposed to the flavourless broth found in Canadian restaurants.

In Search of Moon Hill
For breakfast, a trip to the Chinese market yields rice dough fritters with nutmeg and sugar inside, and more hot soy milk. I also enjoyed some Yunnan coffee. I can thank Starbucks for that one – I think nothing of spending $1.50 on a cup of coffee but consistently balk at paying the same price for a decent tea like pu ehr or oolong. I’m told there is a lot of good tea in Yunnan, which is good because for the most part, finding good Chinese tea is easier in Toronto than in China.

For those not lounging around town, many excursions to the countryside exist. Expensive kayaking, spelunking and other trips can be arranged. Better still, rent a bike and head out to the farmer’s paths. The karst formations are absolutely wonderful, and because of the pollution the best way to see them is to get up close and personal. (I do have some photos, but not many because of all the haze.)

I took a ride to the town of Fuli to check out their market. It was a typical market and although I love browsing, I hate attempting to buy things because of the bargaining. Anything I buy – peanuts or sugar or tea – will be in a fairly small quantity. So the vendor doesn’t get much out of me by offering the “local” price. They aren’t so flexible as a result, but I’m not stupid and sometimes it’s tough to close a sale. I know things are cheaper here than back home, but some vendors refuse to go lower than the Canadian price. I’ve walked away more than once.

After lunch, I headed to the famous Moon Hill. I took a semi-wrong road and ended up on a farmer’s path through fields and rice paddies. This is why they rent out mountain bikes. I finally got back to the road and kept going. I never quite made it to Moon Hill. I determined that I was too tired to climb it anyway, and I’d be just as well off to look at all the other hills nearby, so that is what I did.

Still in Search of Moon Hill
The next day I was off to make a simple bike ride up the Yulong River to the 15th century Dragon Bridge, one of China’s largest medieval bridges.

Oh, were it that simple. I had two maps to work with, but neither of them were particulary clear with respect to bike paths. There was a very narrow farmer’s track which was not passable on a bicycle because of steep declines on either side. So I went off to find the bike path that started at the back of…Moon Hill.

So for the second straight day, I failed to find Moon Hill and ended up in the dusty pitstop called Puyi, which is thirty kilometres away from the Dragon Bridge. I found a bike path and decided I’d take that back. Of course, this was not on the map, but I got a little lucky. It went 4km into the hills, to a pair of hamlets where cars cannot reach. Save for a few white tile buidings, these were plucked straight from a Pearl S. Buck novel.

I pedalled past fish farms, rice paddies, banana palms and bamboo stands. Old women walked hunched over, their backs broken from a lifetime of labour. Men in dirty cotton clothes and cymbal-shaped straw hats hauled water in pairs of buckets, which were held over their shoulders by a plank of bamboo. Younger adults returned from the market in Puyi with vegetables, empty chicken cages and household goods.

Thankfully, after 4km the road ended, or I may have become completely lost. It was a quick downhill ride to the main road. By the time I got back to Yangshuo I’d hauled 40km for the second straight day and my legs were tapped. It has, however, rekindled a desire to get a mountain bike out to the woods when I get back home. Just another positive to insert itself permanently in me as a result of this trip.

The city of Wuhan (properly pronounced Wooo-haaaan, got you all in check!) is an artificial city. It is actually three cities glorped into one. Wuchang is on the east side of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze). On the west side, seperated by another river, the Han Jiang, are Hankou and Hanyang. Hanyang is the Staten Island of Wuhan and we shall speak of it no further.

The Chang Jiang at this point is a good kilometre wide, and with smog being so thick you can barely see you hand in front of your face, it is not easy to even see Wuchang from Hankou and vice versa.

The streets were great for walking. Nobody harassed me at all. The variety of street food was impressive. Each stand and stall had its own dish. Fried dough with meat and onion stuffing is a great breakfast, especially when taken with hot soy milk (the only way to drink soy milk). Out front of the Technical College, an entire street of food vendors awaits, all with unique offerings.

The main reasons for visiting Wuhan were to arrange onward transportation and to do a little beerhunting. The first taken care of (so I thought), I proceeded with the latter. I was searching for the Kaiwei Beer House. This brewpub is a Wuhan institution, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me. I had an address, but the Chinese don’t concern themselves much with such matters as street numbering, and when they do they don’t take the exercise very seriously, scattering numbers randomly on buildings as if they were thrown to the wind.

Finally, good beer!
Kaiwei was even indicated on my guidebook map. I decided, though, that if such a place still existed, the map was wrong, and went into a nearby hotel to get the real story. Of course, it was wrong and when I walked into the hotel I found myself in a loud, bright hotpot restaurant. With a brewery in the back!

The beer was quite good. The concept of popping into a place for a couple of beers but no food is unknown in China, so they were quite relieved when the brewer took me into the brewhouse to drink back there and talk about the beer business. Kaiwei is now a large company with five outlets in Wuhan and a further three or four in other cities in the south of China. He advised me to pay a visit to China’s brewing school, located at the Technical College in Wuchang. Wuchang? After just 14 hours, I was already a Hankou snob. Wuchang indeed. Why don’t I go to Dartmouth while I’m at it?

But go I did. The brewing school is a German joint venture. In practically every country I’ve been to, someone has asked me “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” I’m going to have to add this to the list of languages for which I have a pipe dream of learning, I guess. It took a while to scrounge up enough words of English amongst the staff to get some basic information and bottles of their delicious Weizen to go.

Exiting Wuhan
returned to Hankou, collected my bag and went to the train station. I don’t mess around with Chinese train stations – I immediately grab someone to help direct me to the right place. According to this person, the right place was the Wuchang train station! They’re not supposed to sell Wuchang tickets at the Hankou station, but they did! I’m pretty sure nobody explained it to me at the time, either. I did not have time to get to the Wuchang train station.

I kept a level head, though. I only freak out when all hope is lost and at this point I knew I had to work hard to find a solution. I was led to the ticket office. They pulled me to a side window. They worked on the problem, and while they were doing this, several pushy Chinese not only lined up behind me (the window still said closed), a few decided to line up in front of me. Hey, who cares that someone is at the window and being helped? When they were summarily dismissed, it put a not-so-secret grin on my face.

Still, at first the clerks could only offer me the same train the next day. Wuhan is not a cheap place to stay, so I checked about an upgrade to first class on a later train (second class was apparently sold out) in the hopes it would be cheaper than staying the night. No such luck. But could I please just take the train tomorrow? I hung my head in distress. It was a little overdramatic, yes, but I have little more than body language at my disposal here. The phrasebook never has the phrase I need. They took me to the VIP room and twenty minutes later produced a ticket for the train later that night. The same train I’d originally requested and for the past 36 hours had been categorically sold out!

So all was good and the next day I arrived in Yangshuo, a backpacker hangout one hour south of Guilin, in Guangxi province.

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