The Apple of My Eye… [Guilin & Yangshuo, China 05.04.13-08.04.13]

Countrysides of Yangshuo

Two days spent in Yangshuo, one night spent in Guilin, NOT ENOUGH TIME.

Last Wednesday Liz suggested that we go to Guilin after seeing pictures of the infamous rock caves, and as the motto of this study abroad trip is “YOLO” (in addition to, “Don’t bring dishonour to your GPA and your ancestors”), we got two more people (Gary and Dana) to go with us and departed 2 days later, on Friday.

Guilin and Yangshuo is my kind of scenery, if that makes any sense. I prefer the weekend we spent in China over the 10 days I spent in Thailand and Cambodia, despite both locations having so much to offer and so many things to see.  There’s just something so charming and captivating about the rivers, mountains, and the countryside that I’ll never be able to shake off.

The Crew: Dana, Liz, Gary and I. We’re one big happy family! Can’t you tell by the smile on Gary’s face?

GETTING FROM HK TO GUILIN/YANGSHUO [Skip if not interested in travelling to Guilin/Yangshuo]
Friday afternoon after I finished class we headed to Shenzhen (by HK MTR — light blue rail line), where we could buy tickets to either take the train or bus to Guilin.

By train?
I think the last train leaves around 5-6pm, and tickets should be bought in advance to avoid the awkward situation of “sorry, tickets are sold out” (NOT a good situation when you don’t have the luxury of waiting until the next day to take the train).  Trains have ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sleepers (beds), hard sleepers starting from 200 RMB+ and soft sleepers from 400 RMB+.  I’ve heard that hard sleepers aren’t as ‘hard’ as they sound, but that if you’re unlucky you’ll get stuck in a train where people disregard the assigned seating on the tickets they got and take whatever seat/bed they want, PLUS they smoke inside the train so for 10+ hours you’ll have to bear the cigarette stench and live with the knowledge that with every inhale, your lungs are slowly dying (although I WILL admit there are some cigarette brands that don’t smell bad at all).

By bus!
We opted for bus.  This man came up to us and told us that the bus station had moved and to follow him to go buy tickets (he was obviously working for a tour agency but pulled out his “ID” to prove his credibility. Looking back on it the ID means nothing, it could easily have been fake.. as most things seem to be in China, lawls).  We even asked the police officer and he said to just follow the guy so we reluctantly followed.  At his agency they offered tickets for 240 RMB to go to Guilin or Yangshuo, our choice (some busses stop in Yangshuo with Guilin as the last stop).

First fail here: forgot to research the normal price of a bus ticket from Shenzhen-Guilin. ALWAYS LOOK UP PRICES BEFOREHAND.

We decided to go for it and didn’t worry about the what-if’s too much… to be honest, from travelling during spring break/reading break I’m quite accustomed to the idea that someone WILL rip you off and its part of gaining travelling wisdom.  We were right though, the bus the man advertised to us was NOT the same bus we got on.

Second fail. The beds on the sleeper bus fit me juuuust right, but seeing how Liz, Gary, and Dana were taller than me, their knees kept hitting the rails of the bed in front of theirs.  Not the greatest position to be in for 12 hours (that’s how long the ride was).

The ride itself was an overnight one, so we clocked out for the most part. Gary, Dana, and Liz (and others in the bus) got mysterious bug bites, so in the middle of the night we all threw off our blankets (creating a mountain of blankets that obstructed the aisle, it was a pretty amusing sight).  I actually didn’t get any bites but I just wanted to be safe.  The downside of getting rid of our blankets was that the ride was a bit chilly the rest of the way.

View overlooking Yangshuo from the People’s Park (人民公园, just opposite the bus station).. there’s a couple lookout points in People’s Park. We just walked around until we found the path up to a really tall one (where this pic was taken).

Guilin First? No, Yangshuo!!!
We decided on the bus (talk about spontaneity…) to go to Yangshuo instead of Guilin first, so we informed the bus driver of our change and got to Yangshuo at 7am.  Completely disoriented and freezing (it was FREEZING. Third fail here: never assume what the weather will be like in the place you’re travelling to. Always look it up beforehand!), a very well-spoken tour guide came up to us and the negotiations began. He would take us to go bamboo rafting on the Yulong river, then see the rock caves, bike through the countryside, see Moon Hill, and boat ride down the Li River for 450 RMB.  We bargained it down to 350 RMB.

Fourth fail here: don’t take the first tour guide offer you get ESPECIALLY if you’re not sure about the approx prices for the things you want to do. Another tour agency later told us that they would’ve given us the same package for 200 RMB (this agency was really, really nice. Even gave us pomelo and tea and gave us tons of helpful information).

Regardless, he bought us some breakfast, and we were off.  Everything, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, was extremely enjoyable, even the bike ride of death through the countryside (we wanted to bike a bit slower to take in the scenery, but we had to keep pace with the tour guide who was on his scooter).

Yulong River

The Day in Yangshuo – Yulong River, Biking Through The Countryside, Gold Water Caves, Moon Hill, Li River
Bamboo rafting on the Yulong river is a definite must-do.  Ordinarily its about 300 RMB/per boat (which fits 2 people, so 150 RMB/person), but local tour guides get it way cheaper.  This price discrepancy is how tour guides make money off your services, but at the same time you save money because its cheaper to go through them than pay the regular tourist price for everything.  It’s a happy medium, so long as you know the regular tourist prices in advance.

Yulong River

On the Yulong River :3 Cutiepies.

Make like a flamingo :3

Fifth fail here: we didn’t know the tourist prices for everything we wanted to do, only some. I’d recommend going to a couple different agencies and see what prices they give you to get a good estimate before you agree to any one tour guide’s services. Even better, figure out the tourist prices and bargain down as much as possible to get the local prices if you decide to tour around by yourself.  e.g. instead of paying 120RMB to get into a rock cave, I’ve heard of foreigners bargaining it down to 50 RMB.

After the Yulong river we biked through the countryside (we biked around the whole day as our means of transport), stopped at a few scenic places, and finally reached the Gold Water Caves (also famous for its mud bath and hot springs).  Here they light up the  stalagmite/stalactite rock formations instead so it’s all pretty but the mystique is detracted a bit once you realize it’s just coloured lights against intriguingly-patterned rocks. I’d recommend going to Silver Cave or Assembling Dragon (聚龙潭 julongtan) instead of Gold Water.

IN THE COUNTRYSIIIIIIIDE. My friend says that it looks like I’m in the Asian Hunger Games.

We bought these flower crowns for 2-3 RMB each 🙂  If I was in the Hunger Games… these flowers would help me camouflage into my backgroud 8)

Biking. Always be sure to check that your bike is in good condition before you set out as bike rentals in Yangshuo are questionable.  Check the brakes, gears, tires (is there enough air), etc.

Gold Water Cave

Gold Water Cave

Then we went to Moon Hill Cafe, where you can get a good view of Moon Hill.  Wouldn’t eat here though–it was expensive.  Also, make sure to get a tour guide who doesn’t hint all day that you should buy him lunch and dinner.

Moon Hill Rock is on the left hand side. I know it’s miniscule compared to the other mountain in the picture but it was quite impressive in real life haha.

Taken while at Moon Hill Cafe haha

We biked back to the city where our guide told us that because of heavy rain the night before, the Li River was flooded and we wouldn’t be able to do the boat cruise unless we waited until the day after (Sunday).  We had planned to bus to Guilin that night and spend the day going to see the Longsheng Rice Field Terraces, so there was no way we could come back to Yangshuo.  By this point we were kind of fed up with our tour guide; there were many things throughout the day that he did and said that pushed us to our boiling point.  We demanded that we get a portion of our money back, and after 15 minutes or so he finally agreed to give us back 50 RMB/person (Li River boat cruise is about 80 RMB but only 30-50RMB for tour guides, hence we decided on 50).  I was seriously about to punch him in the face.

After that we walked around Yangshuo, got some cheap eats (a must do when travelling anywhere in Asia…), explored the city and avoided the H7N9–although to be honest with everything that happened this week H7N9 was the LAST thing on our minds.  Our biggest concern was probably the washrooms. Most of the ones here don’t have doors, or full walls (they only go halfway to about your hip), and usually have pools of water/feces/urine/godknowswhatelse on the floor.  Plus every time I stepped within a 20 feet radius of the bathroom the stench made me want to puke.  I would honestly wear a medical mask going into these washrooms haha.  Carry lots of tissue paper and ANTIBACTERIAL SOAP.

Guilin!!! Nightmarkets, huge beds, and cheap haircuts.
We had pre-booked our beds at the Ming Palace Youth Hostel in Guilin (or else we would’ve just stayed in Yangshuo for the night).  The hostel had huuuuuge beds, the biggest I’ve slept on here.  It was decent, you can write on the walls and they’re close to a nightmarket and the Guilin bus/train station so no complaints (from the bus station we took a taxi for 9 RMB to the hostel since it’d equal out to only be 2.25 RMB/person. Public busses in Guilin are usually 1-2 RMB so we weren’t saving much by taking the bus).

Our mark on the Guilin hostel walls. Gotta represent UBC!

We asked for directions to the nightmarket and set off.  Found it easily enough after a 5-10 minute walk.  We made a ‘community foodie fund’ where we each pitched in 10 RMB and just bought food to share. 40 RMB (about $7-8 CAD) was enough to buy food to fulfill all of us actually.  Any additional eats that we bought were just because we were curious, ravenous fatties who wanted to try everything and anything.  Haircuts are suuuuuper cheap here and the salons don’t look sketchy either.. so maybe consider getting one 😉

I crave for this rice… it wasn’t anything extraordinary tasting but I find myself to be more a rice person lately. About 2 RMB/bowl of rice.

2 RMB. Rice with assorted fillings 🙂

Tofu pudding with noodles (left). Meatballs with some filling inside (unknown filling.. YOLO) (right).

Durian Desserts at Guilin Night Market!! Not a big fan of durian but these were yummy 🙂 Also it was Liz’s first time having Durian so her reactions were hilarious…

Buns buns buns… look at dem buns… we basically just ate carbs all trip. Delicious, delicious carbs.

Back to Yangshuo
We decided that night we didn’t want to stay in Guilin on Sunday and going to the Longsheng Rice Field Terraces wasn’t an option since it wasn’t the right month to go 😦 I have an unexplainable affinity for rice fields, so I was dying to see it, but instead my heart died a little when I realized it just wasn’t going to happen.  Sunday morning we got some breakfast in the nightmarket area (congee, soymilk, and chinese fried donuts — 11 RMB for all 4 of us, talk about CHEAP!!! And deericious nom nom nom).  Then we bussed to the train station, and went to a few different places/hawkers to figure out prices for busses going back to Shenzhen.

When we woke up Sunday morning and looked outside our window, this is what greeted our eyes. o_o Dana was like: “HEY LOOK GUYS MY CHILDHOOD!” Hahahaha. Dana moved at the age of 9 to the States but went to school in China until she emigrated.

Sixth fail here (so many more than 6 throughout the trip… but whatever): It was a Sunday, plus end of a holiday (Qing Ming was on Thursday), so there was more demand for bus tickets going back to Shenzhen than usual.  That meant prices were higher and availability was lower–we were anxious to secure our spot for a bus going back to Shenzhen.  We walked to a hawker on the street who told us 180 RMB for a shuttle bus seat back to Shenzhen, which was much cheaper than the 300 RMB sleeper seat others were telling us.  Lovely as it was, our first time on the sleeper bus wasn’t exactly something we were eager to experience again, we bought the shuttle bus tickets.

In the end it wasn’t the greatest idea… the bus left around 8pm (although we assembled at 6 pm and just waited for 2 hours… waste of time), and at 3am it stopped, woke everyone up, and had us transfer to a sleeper bus. AT 3 IN THE MORNING. Momentary panic set in during the transfer because only Dana knew Mandarin fluently and the people commandeering the bus aren’t the greatest communicators in the first place.. just imagine the confusion of being woken up at 3am and shepherded off the bus in the middle of godforsaken nowhere with people speaking a language that sounds like an alien tongue since you’ve just woken up. Sleeper bus finally dropped us off at some station in Shenzhen where we had to take a bus for 30 mins to get to Luohu Station (which is the station near China/HK border).

Helloooo Li River!

Li River
In between our deliciously cheap breakfast and the bus ride of hell back to Shenzhen, we paid 90 RMB each for a van to take us to a little town halfway between Guilin and Yangshuo where we could board a boat to go down the Li River for 2 hours (it was cheaper and a shorter ride because parts of the river were still flooded). It was great because we had 4 people–just enough to get our own boat.  The Li River and Yulong River leave different impressions on you… To me, the Li River was more grand, in-your-face, and left a deeper, more abrupt impression.  The Yulong River, while equally magnificent, left a more subtle, serene, calming impression on me.  Both are something to experience.

Hellooooo Li River!

Li River

And now I’ll shut up until my next blog post. This one felt extraordinarily long… Don’t have any major travel plans from now on planned except for Japan from June 21-29.  I might try to do Zhangjiajie for 5-7 days, and am still applying for service trips.

Seventh fail: not stocking up on Oreos (and other snacks) before I came back to HK. SO CHEAP IN CHINA, and such a wiiiiiide variety. Like the colours of the wind [cue Pocahontas song].

PLUS I’M SEEING TEGAN AND SARA ON AUG 31 BACK IN VANCOUVER 😀  Exciiiiiiiited. It’ll be my 3rd time!

Animals that are huge jerks (amongst other updates)

The funniest thing I’ve seen in a loooooong time hahaha oh my god I had to stifle my laughter because I was in the library. BUT SO GREAT! Please watch each and every gif carefully.. and over and over again. So so so great: Animals That Are Huge Jerks

Haven’t updated in a while, but I’ll try and go chronologically:
1) Friday, Feb 22: Shenzhen
2) Haggling
3) Softball and Hiking at Dragon’s Back
4) Cambodia and Thailand, bad exchange student habits and being afraid of my Chinese teacher.
5) 15th day of the lunar month (Feb 24): making glutinous rice balls 湯圓 😀

Connecting the East to the West. 😀 haha

1. FRIDAY FEB 22 – SHENZHEN
Shenzhen is where all the foreign shopaholics/cheapaholics go for their consumerism fix. AKA, cheap cheap cheap shopping. We took the MTR to Lo Wu（羅湖), walked across the border, and then took the Shenzhen Metro two stops over to Dongmen (東門). Getting to Dongmen was easy enough.. figuring out where the damn shopping area was a bit more troublesome.  We got out at exit A and walked left, kept to the left, and then walked straight for a bit until we hit an area that looked like a mix between Causeway Bay and Mongkok. We asked some people along the way but they were just like “this IS dongmen”.. so helpful.

Anyways, we found the place after about 15-20 minutes, and then we shopped for about 8 hours. IT WAS GREAT! GREAT! I need to expand my vocabulary…. Anyways, I ended up getting 3 pairs of pants (including green ones, so that I now have an ALL GREEN OUTFIT. That’s right. ALL green), 3 iphone cases and 2 packs of iphone stickers (mostly gifts for others), some souvenirs, a white dress shirt, and a giant new shiny red backpack, all for about HKD$420, or CAD$58.

Shenzhen wasn’t sketchy at all and I didn’t have to wear my backpack in front of me like a lot of people suggested. I DID see a mother using the sidewalk sewer vent as a public washroom for her toddler, and while this would probably be considered an act of vandalism/indecency/public defacement back home… it’s obviously not in China.

2. Haggling, for those who are curious.
I’m still getting used to haggling. Sometimes a shopkeeper would tell me an item is $260, but that they’d sell it to me for $220, to which I’d say “no” or “I’ll look around and come back.” The most common response is “there’s no need to look around!” or “name your price then, if it works it works and if it doesn’t it doesn’t, doesn’t hurt to name a price” OR, if they were the type who was tired of haggling: “look, are you interested or not?”

Sometimes I’d just ignore what they said or smiled and walked away, and as I did they would yell prices at me to get me to come back. This is a good way to gauge how much you should maybe be paying for an item. This is what happened with the bags. The bags (all different kinds/sizes/functions–from purses to school backpacks to traveller’s backpacks) are ridiculously cheap at Shenzhen; regardless of what kind of bag you’re getting I wouldn’t pay more than 50-60 yuan (about CAD$7-9), but you can get them as low as 38 yuan (CAD$5-6). I’m probably going to get another backpack before I leave to go back home since the build of the backpacks seem pretty durable and they have styles that we would never find back home in Vancouver.

For the white dress shirt, the lady said it was ~$260. I said “no,” they told me to name a price, I said $40, and they would scoff and say something like “impossible” or “no way, no one would sell it for that much!”  When I walked away, they would accept my offer of $40. Doesn’t happen all the time, but happens often enough. I have a feeling that I still overpay for everything since I’m a foreigner and don’t know the prices yet.

3. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY: SOFTBALL AND HIKING AT DRAGON’S BACK
Had our softball game against St John (Aquilas) on Saturday. From what I know at HKU so far, you need to be either 1) rich, 2) good-looking, and/or 3) powerful with connections to get into the St. John’s hall. The selection process to get into their hall is a lot more stringent than other halls, and so obviously they’re a bit more intimidating. I built up this whole image of them as being so “elite” that I was scared to play them, but actually they weren’t as good as I thought they’d be… I mean we still lost 10-5, but I thought we would lose like 20-5 hahaha.

The view before we started hiking Dragon’s Back.

Does this look like a dragon’s back to you?

Some of the girls 🙂

On Sunday we went hiking at Dragon’s Back. The trail itself is only like an hour long, and then it takes another hour or so to get to Big Wave Bay (the beach area). The trail was scenic enough but I was kind of expecting more… when we got to the end of Dragon’s back my response was “… That was it? That was dragon’s back? We’re done?” So I guess the feeling is that you finish it before you think you should. At Big Wave Bay there were lots of people surfing and flying kites; nearby are rental shops and shops selling all kinds of beach goodies to keep you amused. The beach was more foreigners than locals, ha.

Big Wave Bay. Would be a really nice place to spend the day.

Big Way Bay

 

You see the surfer?! There were more I swear… and the waves were okay, didn’t get too high. From my poor memory and sense of judgment, I’d say the waves were like 10 feet?

The group at Big Wave Bay. Stole the pic from a friend on facebook hahah thanks Dana!

4. SUNDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY MORNING: PANIC, CHAOS, LATE NIGHTS
I’m now officially spending my reading break in Thailand and Cambodia! Thailand from Mar 7-13 and Cambodia from Mar 13-17. Booking tickets was stressful and comedic at the same time; we realized at 11:30pm that the deal we found ended at 12am, so we were forced to jump off into the deep end and just go for it.

When we were buying the tickets, my friend’s transaction went through first and then the rest of ours got declined; turns out she bought the last ticket for that flight time LOL. So my friend and I chose a different time, but then her debit card got rejected, then her credit card was rejected, and in my haste to buy the ticket I forgot to uncheck the box that asked if you wanted to check-in luggage (which costs more, about USD$15 each way).  So I paid $30 more for my ticket than my friends did, and my friend had to help buy tickets for the friend whose cards were rejected. We ended up buying everything RIGHT at midnight, right before the promo prices ended.

Then I walked into Chinese class monday morning to the announcement that my presentation and midterm is on March 8. I WANTED TO BANG MY HEAD AGAINST A CONCRETE WALL. God I never would have dreamed of doing this back home, but exchange has made me stupid and my fear was amplified by the fact that my teacher reminds me of Cristina from Grey’s Anatomy. I was so sure that the teacher would hate me and forever deem me as that exchange student who cares only about pass/fail and has terrible study habits, but when I asked to do my midterm/presentation earlier she was surprisingly cool about it. YES, RELIEF!

I’m just really excited for Cambodia. I want to see Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields of Cambodia!

5. GLUTINOUS RICE BALLS!!! 😀
It’s a tradition to eat glutinous rice balls on the 15th day of the lunar month. The girls on my floor made some from scratch, and we put hard rock sugar/dark chocolate/milk chocolate inside. The soup was just melted rock sugar, ginger, and hot water. So so so yummy and comforting. I love mine with sesame filling inside but apparently sesame is fickle to work with.

Mixing the rice flour and water together to make the rice balls 🙂

Ignore the scary butcher knife hahaha.

The finished product! The green ones are the ones that we put matcha powder inside.

A girl on my floor made these for her boyfriend. Isn’t it cute?!

Also, dear HKU: who the heck manages your central air conditioning?!?!? You should fire them for wasting energy. It’s freezing inside the classrooms but outside is all humid and warm. You really don’t need to use air conditioning this early on in the semester. It’s not even that hot yet.

“You’re gonna miss me by my walk, you’ll miss me by my talk, you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone…”

I listened to “Cups (You’re gonna miss me)” on repeat for about 2 hours today. Not the original version by Lulu and the Lampshades, which apparently is based on a 1930s song by the Mainers Mountaineers. But I guess it’s “original” in the sense that Lulu made up the hand movements with the cups?

Random trivia aside, I’ve been listening to the one by Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect. I just prefer Kendrick’s voice more.. seems more honey-coated yet crisp and clear, and suited to singing this kind of song. Is it my biased self talking? Who knows. My ears like what they hear.

But the song made me think a bit. It made me want to ride a train, actually. It made me want to time travel back to the 1930s/50s and travel across the North American continent with nothing more than the clothes on my back and a small bag of things. Kind of like how unemployed people used to train-hop illegally onto freight trains to get to places that gave hopes of employment. I want to see tall golden wheat fields complete with dying-but-not-dead shrubs and a gorgeous sun setting in the background, all while dangling my feet out of  the side of an open boxcar. Maybe I’d even learn to play a couple tunes on a harmonica.

Anyways, it just made me nostalgic for an experience I’ve never had but wish I did, and one that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon haha. It’s a pretty romanticized view anyways… actual train-hopping involved HUGE risks, often ending in lost limbs and lost lives.

In a larger sense, I guess I kind of just want to learn to be more flexible and fluid.. it’s so hard to say when and where and in what aspects of my life do I want to be more “flexible and fluid,” but I was just thinking it’d be nice to take a trip and not do too much planning and just let events unfurl naturally. It could also be extremely stressful… all the frustration that comes from not planning and not knowing what comes next–I’m hoping that having a “flexible” mindset would mean erasing all this frustration. So… maybe I’ll try to do this trip sometime in June.

I was kind of hoping for a sight like this, I guess.

Or a sight like this?…

CHEUNG CHAU!!! 長州！Pirate caves, beautiful beaches, and lots of buns.

On Tuesday (Feb 12), a group of us headed out to Cheung Chau, an island southwest of Hong Kong Island (where HKU is situated).  Apparently it’s 6x smaller than Lamma Island, so I assumed that we’d be able to cover all the hiking trails within a day but we ended up only seeing a few of the many sights the island has to offer.

Actually… now the more I research Cheung Chau the more I feel like we saw nothing on the island. Then again, it was PACKED with tourists (myself included, hehe) because the 12th was still considered a lunar new year holiday, and I kind of felt like we were on a time constraint because I was travelling with a big group (and you have to take into consideration when everyone wants to eat, where they wanna go, what time they want to go back, etc). Therefore we didn’t have as much time to hike all the different trails.

The view of Cheung Chau right when you get off the ferry. Tons of people, lots of little stalls selling food and other knick knacks. There’s tons of “bun” souvenirs (bun like baozi 包子), because Cheung Chau is known for its bun festival.

Houses in Cheung Chau

Street food! (uncooked, obvs) They cook it in some saucey soup (spicy/non-spicy depending on your preferences) after you order.

HERRO KITTY WARFLES! :O flamma. hahaha

We headed off to the right side right after we got off the ferry, and continued walking through the little streets until we reached a bicycle-renting area and a temple. After making a visit to the temple we split into 2 groups, those who wanted to hike and those who wanted to bike, and we agreed to meet back up in 2 hours. Anyways, 2 hours was not enough time!  We walked by a cemetary before reaching Sai Wan, a small village. At Sai Wan there’s another Tin Hau temple (Tin Hau 天后 = name of a Goddess. She has several temples dedicated to her all over HK).

About 10 mins from the temple you get to Cheung Po Tsai Cave (張保仔), which was TINY, NARROW, AND PITCH BLACK. We were lining up outside waiting to get in and we saw a man sitting near the cave entrance (which we couldn’t see) selling flashlights, and I actually said out loud: “I wonder how that guy makes a living, he can’t sell THAT many flashlights.”

Going into the cave haha. It’s rumoured that this cave was where the famous pirate Cheung Po Tsai (google him) hid his booty. I really doubt it.

I was wrong. Dead wrong.  I thought there would be lights inside the cave or some natural sunlight that would seep in, but the cave was actually pitch black and we were stupid and couldn’t go back to buy a flashlight. Therefore my phone acted as our flashlight hahaha. Pitch black-ness aside, the cave was really cool. You descend into the cave (hence why we couldn’t see the entrance), walk a bit, go down a ladder (imagine how dangerous that is in the dark), and walk through this super narrow path until you get to the exit (where you climb a ladder to get out). The path is actually so narrow at times that one has to twist/turn their body sideways to get through. If you’re physically out of shape… I’d avoid going in the cave or you might have to make an embarrassing turn back to get out the way you came in.

Ducking under to get through.

This girl is tiny! The wall-to-wall distance is literally probably 2.5 feet max at times.

Ladder to get out.

At the exit of Cheung Po Tsai Cave haha.

I’m pretty sure this was the view that we saw while waiting to get into the cave.

After the cave we headed to the Reclining Rock, and beyond that a beach that’s apparently nicknamed “Italian Beach” by the local foreigners. Anyways, the path to the Reclining Rock and the beach itself was beauuuuuutiful, rivalling that of the beaches and paths on Lamma island.

View of Italian Beach

I was standing on top of the Reclining Rock when I took this picture of a man fishing (he was extremely far from me, on much lower ground).

Afterwards some of us had a seafood dinner and walked around looking at the shops. I especially enjoyed this man’s outfit.

The girls from the group that went to Cheung Chau 🙂

I’ll have to go back and explore the rest of the island to see all the major landmarks. This time, in a small group!  Also I think their bun festival is in May this year.. maybe I’ll go for that.

Cheung Chau Bun Festival 包山節. These are buns piled 60 feet high. People used to climb up these towers of buns until an accident happened in 1978 where the towers collapsed under the weight of too many people and 100+ people were injured. Since then the structures are still erected but no climbing competition is done.

If you’re going to go to Cheung Chau and want to do some walking around, these sites might help:
1) http://www.hkoutdoors.com/outlying-islands/cheung-chau.html

2) http://www.cheungchauhk.com/walking-cheung-chau/mini-great-wall-and-other-cheung-chau-trails (this website in general has tons of detailed pages about different “hikes” you can do in Cheung Chau–just look under “Articles” on the left hand side)

I think my roommate’s a drug dealer.

Kidding! But I think she is dealing in apple products or something because yesterday she and her ‘friend’ walked in and when I looked over a couple minutes later her ‘friend’ was opening a brand new iPhone box and my roommate seemed to emanate this whole “are you gonna buy or not buy?” aura. Plus my roomie owns a macbook and ipad, which for some reason (correct me if i’m wrong) is realllllly expensive for mainlanders.  However, I could care less because my roomie offers to sweep my floor and is super considerate. I’ll overlook suspicious black-market activity in light of this.

As a forewarning: the post is long but that’s because it contains a million gajillion photos. Also I suck at condensing anyways (why do you think I’m an arts student…).

Today was AMAAAAAAAAAAAAAZING.  A group of 15-18 of us (safety in numbers! ha) travelled to Lamma Island, an island to the southwest of HK Island, where there were not (sadly) any llamas. There were, however, BEAUTI-FRICKING-FUL BEACHES!!! and hiking paths. And old Chinese tombstones that were beautiful in their own creepy way. Since I didn’t want to take a picture of the gravestones and risk catching bad luck (and also getting attacked by a guard dog. Yeah. There was a legit GUARD DOG standing at one of the tombstones just glaring at us), I stole one from google in case y’all never seen one:

They’re really pretty in person, but obviously you need a lot of space for these graves so I don’t think you’d every find them in the city.

Map of Lamma Island (南丫島). We started out at the Ferry Pier near Yung Shue Wan (榕樹灣), followed the orange path down to Sok Kwu Wan (索罟灣), and then took the red path around in a circle til we got back to Sok Kwu Wan. All in all it took us about 5-6 hours, including a lot of down time spent at the various beaches and villages along the way.

The group of 15-18 gradually naturally separated into 3 groups. This one girl told me about how her swedish friend literally got her hair PULLED out by some old chinese lady on the bus. Just unexpectedly, suddenly–the chinese lady walked up, didn’t say a word, pulled out some hair, and got off the bus. And apparently caucasians are asked to hold babies all the time because its good luck. So odd.

Weird lemon looking fruit… or is it orange?..

TO THE BEACH!

Some of the houses in the villages we were passing by. There were nicer ones than this and worse ones, but I guess I’d consider this an average one.

The houses at the top are as tall as me.. these group of houses were seriously in the middle of nowhere. And I’m pretty sure that the green one is inhabited at least. It’s crazy!!!

The villages along the way remind me of the ones you see in the more rural/traditional parts of China, except no buildings in Lamma island are allowed to be over 3 storeys high.  They’re also not allowed cars except for like firemen/policemen and I believe some transport-related cars. So transport is mainly by bike or foot.

Overlooking Sok Kwu Wan (索罟灣, Picnic Bay).

I think the prettiest part of the hike today was when we were at the Shek Pai Wan beach (石排灣沙灘). It seriously felt like I had stumbled into some kind of alternate Hong Kong, where the water was unpolluted and the land was uninhabited except for stray travellers who were fortunate enough to stumble this way. There was, however, lots of garbage spoiling the tideline. PICK UP AFTER YOURSELVES DAMN HIKERS.

Shek Pai Wan Beach

Shek Pai Wan Beach. There were a lot of rocks to climb and sit on, some decently high. It just wasn’t a good idea to climb them when the tide was coming in.. we were able to cross over to the rocks no problem but had to take our shoes and socks off coming back because the tide was too high..

Friend fell in. LOLOL hahaha oh god I was laughing so hard. She was wearing her brand new green adidas shoes too 😦

We also stumbled upon a cave that I found out (after getting home) are nicknamed “Kamikaze Caves”. At the time we just went into the cave thinking it was haunted and that we were gonna die. Turns out that Japanese soldiers during WWII built these caves to hide speedboats that would be used on suicide missions against the Allied forces.

KAMIKAZE CAVE!!!! No suicides today though.

We also took a wrong turn and ended up stumbling further into a village than we should have. At one point we couldn’t tell the difference between any buildings and one girl was like “Is that a toilet? No wait its a house” hahahah.

Home of early Yung Shue Ha settlers (~early 1800s). On the North and Eastern parts of Lamma island there’s apparently evidence of habitation as far back as 3000-4000 years ago!

To explain the above picture, since the ruins don’t look much like houses.

We came back to HK Island, had some noodles (i’ve never eaten noodles so often in my life….), egg waffles (雞蛋子), and booked it back home. HOME, TO WHERE THE DORMS ARE AT. I actually feel at home here now. I went to visit another friend’s dorm and even though it’s newer and technically nicer, I really preferred the feel of my own dorms.  Also the girls on my floor are now expecting a korean dinner and western breakfast from me…. so Tuhina WE GOT HIGH EXPECTATIONS TO UPHOLD.