Saturday, April 13, 2013

Day 26: 2/4 Guilin is Calling My Name

                Yesterday I had received two sticky notes on my door, one from each person who I would be traveling with to Guilin.  Apparently I didn’t read both of them too carefully because in the morning I went to the Garden Lounge (the 6th deck dining hall) to meet the group at 8, because I knew that’s what one sticky note said and I assumed the other one said the same thing… wrong-o.  I ate some breakfast and waited for the group to show up; 15 minutes passed before I saw Braden (who wrote the sticky note I followed).  It wasn’t for another 10 or so minutes that we realized that Emily (the other person in our group) said to meet in Tymitz Square at 8… apparently she wasn’t very happy there was a miscommunication.  While we were now waiting for her in Tymitz Square, we came across a sign that read, “In loving memory of Wade Lancaster…”  Wade Lancaster was a professor who taught on the ship.  I had heard the night before that he had a heart attack on the bus after a field program, but I had no clue that he had passed away.  We found out he had passed the night before from a stroke.  This news struck me like a slap in the face.  I didn’t know him personally, but his wife teaches one of my classes.  He was there every class walking around with the attendance sheet for everyone to sign in during class.  I knew that deaths have happened on Semester at Sea and it was a possibility, but, no matter what, you don’t expect it to happen.  The fact that I had encountered him and seen him every other day, and now he was gone, made my mind race with thoughts and emotions of life and death.

Back to our adventure, to add to Emily being mad that we were “running late,” I had to go to an ATM because I didn't have any cash on me to help pay for a taxi. I stopped at the ATM across the street, but neither machine would accept my card. Emily was getting really irritated that we hadn't left yet (note: it was about 8:30-9 am and our flight was at 12:20). We got in a taxi and arrived at the airport at about 9:30, so we were 3 HOURS early for our flight. I know it's better to be safe than sorry, but seriously?  The airport felt super empty which for some reason kind of made me feel uneasy, but because it was so empty we went through security and everything very quickly which was nice. We then got some lunch and Emily wanted to find a battery for some water filter thing she had. She asked if we would be sitting in the restaurant for a little longer while she went to look for a battery.  We said that was fine and just sat there talking for 15 minutes… 30 minutes… an hour… no sign of her.  We waited a little longer because we figured she’d be coming back to where we were, but she just went to the terminal at some point and didn’t inform us.  This is a good start to a five day trip, huh?  However, as we were waiting and Braden went to search for Emily, he ran into this girl, Allie, who was traveling to Guilin without a group, so she joined our group. 

We finally started to board our plane just before noon.  As we flew on our 2.5 hour flight, we were served beverages (water and a drink of our choice) as well as a meal.  I can’t remember the last time I had a meal during a flight, and even though it wasn’t the greatest meal it was still nice to have.  As we started to land, I could see hints of the hills of the gorgeous Guilin out the window.  After we landed, I found out that we would actually be staying in a nearby town to Guilin called Yangshuo.  As we were trying to figure out all of the things we wanted to do while in the area we were also trying to figure out how we were going to get to Yangshuo.  We ended up hopping on a bus that took us to the actual city of Guilin, and then we planned to change buses to go to Yangshuo.  As the bus drove through the city, we realized how crazy and chaotic the roads seemed.  There were so many motor bikes, bicycles, vehicles, and people crossing this huge intersection with, what seemed to me, very little organization.  We got to the bus station and were trying to figure out what bus we needed to get on when these two young Chinese girls (probably middle school or early high school age), who were completely gaga over Braden, started to help us find our way to the correct bus.  We got on this bus that cost us 18 Yuan (about 3 dollars) to get to Yangshuo; we later found out this wasn’t a legit bus from the actual bus system but rather a bus that was more independently run and would make more stops… kind of sketch if you ask me.  On the bright side, as we drove into town we were gradually surrounded by the amazing hills/mountains that make the area famous.  It was breathtakingly beautiful out there and, during the drive, the sun was setting giving the wondrous mountains a beautiful backdrop.  In that moment I knew I had made the right decision to skip on the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Terracotta soldiers and come to this area.

When we finally made it to Yangshuo, we ran into another road block.  We didn’t know exactly where the hostel we planned to stay in was located.  We walked up and down the street that we knew it was on without a clue of where it could be.  We asked many different people who would point us in the direction we just came, and then we would walk a little bit back the way we came and would ask someone else who would point us back the other way.  It took us a good 30 minutes to actually find the place, which made sense because it was kind of tucked away in a back street.  The hostel was called the No Kidd Inn and was this cute, colorful five story hostel with a roof top “bar” (which actually had a great view of the area surrounding the hostel which included beautiful hills and a river, but the bar wasn’t much of a bar) and very friendly staff.  The best parts of the hostel though were the fact that it only cost about $7 a night to stay there and that there was this little puppy that lived there who was one of the cutest little things! We got the keys to our rooms and dropped our stuff off before going out to get something to fill our empty stomachs.  We walked around a bit but then got to the point where we were so hungry that we just wanted to get food, so we ate at the next restaurant we came across.  We perused over the menu a bit before deciding what to get (mostly based on the pictures they offered since very little was in English).  One of the things we got was fried shrimp which didn’t look terrible in the picture, but when they brought out the dish we were less than pleased with the outcome.  They were these little one inch long shrimps that were caught in the nearby river; they were then lightly battered and deep fried whole, eyes, antenna things, shell and all.  When put in the mouth your tongue was greeted by either a taste of cardboard or poop… appetizing huh?  Not much of that dish really got consumed.  We then stopped by a little convenience store to get some snacks since our dinner wasn’t very filling.  We went back to the hostel, and Allie (who I was sharing a room with) and I spent a good amount of time just talking about random things.  It was a nice ending to an interesting day.

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