Yangshuo

This weekend here in China was Mid-Autumns Festival holiday. Which for us means... vacation! On our last day of teaching Friday before we left we were given a bunch of Moon Cakes from the school and families. Moon cakes are a tradition here to eat on this holiday. To put it nicely, they are nasty-nast. They trick you, by smelling and looking like delicious pastries. They fooled me good, and it only took a few seconds of chewing for that to end up in a tissue instead of my tummy. I dont know why, but the Chinese love them here. And some of the girls liked them too, but most of us thought they tasted like dirt from a shoe. Very kind of everyone to give us them though.

So Friday night we left around 6:30 to take a sleeper bus 10 hours away. I was pretty nervous about this overnight sleeping bus, I've heard some horror stories about them. But it really wasnt that bad! A lot cleaner than I expected. But Im sure we just got lucky this trip... many more sleeper buses in my future. Annalisa and I snatched up the bottom bunk beds, knowing I wouldnt be able to sleep on the top ones with how crazy they drive here. 90% of the time we dont really know whats going on because of the language so we were surprised when the bus was stopping every half hour to pick up stragglers on the side of the road. These stragglers had to sit in the aisle in between us.. for 10+ hours. Sucky for them.. and sucky for us. Random strangers laying all over our stuff and us. And most of them were not good smelling strangers =/

{sleeper bus}

DAY 1

About 6 am we strolled off the bus hoping we got off at the right place, and showed a taxi man the name of our Hostel. 5 minutes later we were dropped off at this cute, quaint Hostel. We met some cool people and made friends with the awesome workers and owner. I love Hostels! They make the trip so much better

{'NANA' The hostels welcome dowgy}

{One of the coolest parts about the Hostel- 6 floors of rooms and they just have paint on every floor for travelers to paint as they wish. We had a lot of fun with that}

After we took a little nap we hit the town. We spent a lot of hours walking up and down Western Street. It had tonnns of bargain shopping, and oh so delicious foods. I might have gained 5 pounds just that day. what? I miss American food. After shopping we took a beautiful bamboo-boat ride down the Li River. It was breath taking.

{Walking street}

{Bamboo ride} {I stole this one from Annalisa. shes a photographer, obvi}

We ended our night with dancing to some fun techno music with some very excited locals, and tourists. Why do people love Americans so much?! Its entertaining. I dont hate it :)

DAY 2

Meet my main lady Ester. Ester found us on Western street, her job is to wander around and find people wanting to take tours. Most of these people we shewed away... but Ester caught our eye. How could she not? Look at this smile. She is one of the happiest people, and helped us out so much our whole trip. Ester is 50, and is supporting her 2 daughters by herself because her husband is lazy. (Her words not mine haha) She has a difficult home life. So many times throughout the day I would just get teary eyed thinking about things she told us about her life. We decided to give her a big tip since she was only making about 10 american dollars a day, after all her hard work. We loved you Ester!

OUR FULL DAY TOUR:

We met up with Ester at 9 am, and started our day out with a 15 mile bike ride. Give or take a few miles. Ester led us through the busy city, neighborhoods, the country, and dirt roads. It was a difficult bike ride, but it was so scenic the whole time, and we got a glimpse of a good variety. We finally made it to Buddha Water Caves where we explored and then played in the caves natural mud pool and hot water springs. Tchhaa... playing in mud?! I cant count how many times I've wanted to just roll, jump, splash and play in gallons of mud. And it was everything I was hoping it would be. Even had some mud slides. All this= a good day for Mandy.

But Ester had more in store for us! After we got as clean as we could and filled our fuel tanks with some lunch we continued with our journey by hiking up Moon Hill. 839 steep steeeeeep uphill steps! Did I mention we had already biked all morning? On top of all this, Annalisa and I for some reason caught a bad case of the giggles. Everything was hilarious to us- plants, feet, farts, singing, peoples faces, our sore bodies... we had it bad. We couldnt move much for a long while, and finally got our act together and made it to the top of Moon Hill! It was so worth it, such an exquisite view.

After all this we biked back home. We added an extra 2 hours to return because we lost one of the girls =/ uhhh... note to self: stay with the group! But somehow when we got home a few of us conjured up enough energy to go out dancing again, this time with the owner of our Hostel, Gavin.

{bike ride}

{mud caves- We were to busy gettin durrty to take a lot of pictures}

{Moon hill}

{Friends from around the world! Left to Right- Sacramento, Japan, Ohio, Germany, Czech Republic}

{Night out with Gavin}
{These are the DJ's!}

DAY 3

Our last day in Yangshuo was spent in the best way for us. We rented motor bikes all day for 40 yuan a person, which is like 5 dollars? Umm can you do that in the US? Don think so. I love China. They were kinda difficult to drive but we got the hang of them. Except for stopping and starting. Annalisa is a super trooper for holding on while we wiggled around when I drove. It was so nice and relaxing and felt so good to be adventurous and still explore while sitting down :) It was so peaceful just cruising around looking at the pretty mountains and the really cool towns and homes. Great way to end our vacation.

Now were back at our home in Zongshan. I was really excited to see my lil ones today. I missed them!