Yangshuo Day 5 - Leaving

On Wednesday morning we hung out at the Buffalo Bar and got ready to go to the train station in Guilin. We could have taken a taxi for 200 kuai but wanted to try the bus which was only 13 kuai. We had been told there was a local bus and an express bus. The local cost 10 and the express was 13 (less than $0.50 difference). We were running a bit late and got to this one bus that said Guilin. We kept asking if it was express and how much it cost but three different people gave us three different answers. We got on the bus since it was about to leave and we did not see anything else. Alex asked if I could go check out the other buses just in case. I looked around and found another bus that was definitely the express bus, it had a sign, it was nicer and was leaving in five minutes. I ran back to Alex and saw the bus she was on was about to leave. I ran on the bus and yelled to Alex, "GET OFF THE BUS!!!!!" So we grabbed our massive packs and as the bus was driving we were yelling "TING JAR!!!!" ("stop here"). No one listened until we got to the front of the bus and the guy finally stopped. Then we tried to ask for our money back and the woman who sold us the tickets laughed at us (not the cute laugh either) and was being a total slimeball. We got onto the express bus minutes before it left and were all set. The best part about the express bus was the hour and a half we spent watching Chinese music videos. There are no words to describe these videos, but I will try: insanely cheesy, horribly animated (probably by someone's kid who just started highschool) and lame. It was great fun ripping them apart from the back of the bus.

We got to the train station quite easily from the bus station in Guilin and had a nice 23 hour trip. The last train we took was from Beijing to Shanghai and we had free meals. This train however did not provide free meals, they were 15 kuai each and were not nearly as good. There were TV screens in the rooms though and I watched Armageddon dubbed in Chinese. It's not like that movie has amazing dialog anyway, so it didn't really phase me. It was weird though how we were driving in one direction for about three hours and then at this one stop we started going the other way and continued in that direction the remainder of the trip. I am not quite sure what was going on there.

We got to Beijing around 2 PM the next day and so was the end of our adventures in Yangshuo. It was an amazing time and if you are ever in China, I highly recommend you check it out. There is so much to explore and so much to do. The only thing I regret is not staying a bit longer to take a day trip to Longsheng. Longsheng is filled with ride terraces and from what I have seen in Carrie’s photos they are amazing. Maybe next time . . .