Day 184: Xingping & Yangshuo
Even though the neighborhood and clientele of the This Old Place Hostel were incredibly quiet, Lindsay had a HORRIBLE night sleep due to a loose piece of metal sheeting that rattled, clanged, and SMASHED against the roof of the building – since our room was on the top floor, the banging was directly outside outside our window. Even with earplugs, the noise kept waking Lindsay up until 2AM when the wind finally died. Igor, however, can apparently sleep through a tsunami and slept like a baby. When the sun came up at 6:30AM that morning, Lindsay begged Igor to let her sleep in while he took a solo hike to the Xingping mountain viewpoint.
Igor takes an early morning hike to a lookout point, giving him a bird’s eye view of Xingping
Xingping and the Li River
When Igor returned at 8AM, we packed up and headed down to breakfast. We decided to try and find the Fishing Village again, carefully reviewing the directions for the hiking trail with the hostel staff before we left (good thing – turns out we were *way* off the track yesterday). Since check-out was at noon, we locked out bags in the hostel’s free storage lockers before we left.
We load up on a proper Western breakfast (delicious!) and run through the directions carefully with the hostel staff
Climbing stone steps on our hike over the mountain to the Fishing Village – crossing our fingers the “leaves of three” we see on the path are not poison ivy – we encounter more pomelo trees as we close in on the village
Walking through the 400-year old alleys of the Fishing Village outside Xingping
A big pile of tiny, dried fish for sale. Well, it wouldn’t be a Fishing Village without fish!
The #1 attraction at the Fishing Village is the “Clinton House.” Back in 1998, during Clinton’s inaugral visit to the country, he asked to see “the real China,” and was taken to this tiny, backwater village. The owner of the house the Clinton family toured has turned it into a little shrine to the US president (charging RMB 5pp for a looksie!) – you’d think the guy would play up the fact that Hillary was there too, given the current election, but he only has eyes for Bill! I guess he’s not really following the US election.
A mural of photographs dominate the wall of the “Clinton House”
The house visited by one US President…and maybe a future US president? (Lindsay’s keeping her fingers crossed!)
Following the stairwell up to the roof
Taking in the beautiful view of the terracotta tile roof of the Clinton House
We had no desire to climb back up the mountain and potentially expose ourselves to more poison ivy, so we followed a little old lady down to the river to see if we could hire a bamboo raft back to Xingping. She tried to sell us tickets on the cruise ship for RMB 200, which we refused as we didn’t want to be packed on a boat with 50 Chinese tourists. We asked again for “bamboo,” to which she argued back something we couldn’t understand. After several minutes of hand gestures and Google Translate, we finally figured out that the bamboo rafts weren’t allowed to run until noon (we had read about this – the local government bans bamboo rafts on the Li River from 10:30AM – 12:00PM everyday in an effort to control water traffic) so we would have to wait 15min, plus, the rafts weren’t allowed to go all the way to Xingping, we would have to walk a “little distance” then take a ferry for RMB 10. Price stayed the same though, which seemed like a rip off to us, but we agreed anyways.
Our little old lady waves to us as we take off from the Fishing Village
The bamboo raft crosses the river, then takes us down a narrow stream. Once the water is too shallow for the raft, the driver beckons us to follow him on foot – he guides us about 500m down the bank, and then leaves us at a paved path to find our way back to Xingping
We know the general direction for Xingping, so we keep walking along the riverbank for about a kilometer until we see the wharf
Once again, we take in the beautiful karst mountains surrounding the Li River
Once we reach the wharf, it’s a short ferry ride back to Xingping
Before heading back to the hostel, we have one last attraction to visit – the 20 Yuan Viewpoint – a vista of the Li River that is duplicated on the back of the RMB 20 banknote
It’s a 20 Yuan View!
Grabbing a late lunch at the This Old Place Café – keeping it simple and satisfying with a club sandwich and a side of fries
Buses to Yangshuo run every 15min, so we have no wait and there are plenty of seats available when we walk to the bus stop
When we arrived in Yangshuo, we were a bit disoriented – our cell phone GPS has been on the fritz ever since we arrived in China and we couldn’t figure out where we were on the map. Our hotel was supposed to be a 20min walk outside of downtown, and we couldn’t find a marked taxi anywhere! Just as we had resigned ourselves to walking with our 18kg backpack, a short Chinese guy came up to us and started to ask, “Where are you going?” We asked if he had a taxi – turns out Yangshuo is full of unmarked taxis, so we hopped in the guy’s sedan and let him drop us off (it would have been an hour walk, BTW – so relieved we caught a ride!).
We enjoyed the rest of the evening in our quiet, Riverside Hotel – far from the hustle and bustle from downtown.