Visit To Conehead Land

 

Jack here. I am giving Lori a Blog rest.  Which means you'll get very little history or valuable content from my entries.  We flew out of Xi'an today amidst their normal heavy polution and said bye bye to this small city of 8 million people.  It reminded Lori and I of Bladerunner.  After paying too much for a taxi to Scooter (all taxi drivers from here on out will be known as Scooter when I blog), we got to Xi'an airport, and jumped on Southern China Air for a 2 hours flight to Guilin (pronounced "gweelan").  Very tropical and HUMID.  We had a driver scheduled to pick us up to drive 90 minutes to our destination city, Yangshou.  More on that later.  Upon getting in the cab, Scooter handed me the note you see above.  Read it carefully, slowly and out loud if you like.  If you can tell us what it means, I'll pay your 3000 Yuan.  Because we had no idea.  Eventually, and once we disregarded the title that must have had something to do with Lori's perfume, we figured out that he was offering to take us on a much less scenic path to our hotel for 30 more Yuan.  Less views of beauty for more money?  Of course we chose that option.  

 

This is literally the view from our room, a floor to ceiling window vista.  And naturally the pic doesn't do justice to its magnificence.  We are outside of a town named Yangshou, which is located on the Li River.  The area is completely surrounded by these odd shaped mountains, called Karst...Limestone covered with tropical vegetation.  They look like the Coneheads from Saturday Night Live. And there are a gillion of them.  This area is a hotbed for tourists, esp rock climbers.  Obviously the reason Lori and I chose Yangshou.  The area is filled with bike paths, the Li River, which we'll be on tomorrow on a bamboo raft, and of course, hiking.  So you want to know a little about our hotel?  Well....its called the Li River Retreat.  "Li" in Chinese stands for "Red Roof Inn".  Scooter drove down this very narrow and dark path, stopped and put the car in reverse.  And he was backing up a very steep mountain.  In reverse.  He eventually stopped, we got out, turned around and were standing face to face with the Li River Retreat.  All the windows were open, the front door was open (+80 and heavy humidity) and I am thinking, "Well, I guess I could always sleep on the flight home, because it's not going to happen in this hotel."  But as always, the front desk person was terrific, friendly, offered us a cold coke and introduced herself as "Bunny".  We checked in, and Bunny who was all of 85 lbs, carried our overweight suitcase up a flight of stairs (wouldn't let me).  We opened the door and it was very nice.  And then the view above.  Bunny did hand me a remote with white band-aid tape on it. The tape covered up the Chinese writing with words like, "Fan", "High", "AC On".  How many places do you get to control your ac from bed?  My wife knows how to pick em.

 

This is a much more comfortable view of Lori after we had been in town for 2-3 hours.  After we arrived at the hotel and room, she kept smiling, but continued to mutter something like, "I am out of my comfort zone, but I'll be fine. I am out of my comfort zone, by I'll be fine".  Kind of like a chant. But once she got over the fact that there was no elevator in the place, she was just fine.  As shown above.  A bit on Yangshou.  The word, loosely translated means "Gatlinburg",  "Estes Park" or "Branson".  I don't know what the Chinese version of Funnel cakes would be, but I am sure they are serving them somewhere on this street.  Funky and fun restaurants, lots of stores where people, once again, are clamoring to sell stuff, and some seriously great people watching, which brings me to my last photo.  

 

The white haired guy to the left might as well have a sign that says, "I am really stupid.  I am a lonely American and just want to talk English with someone".  This is one of the great street schemes.  The girls in the picture come up to American looking people, and say they are working to improve their English. They would like to try it out on you.  Provided you say yes, they walk with you, eventually to a booth where they try to sell you Chinese Funnel cakes.  You can sense the con a mile away.  Unless you are this guy who's wearing that sign I just wrote about.  When I walked by him, I heard him say something like, "Well, missy, I think your english is great.  Better than many in my own country.  I would be glad to help you...."  I quickly spun around to shoot this picture and the flash must have pulled him out of his "trance".  Lori will probably be back at her Blog Desk tomorrow. Stay tuned for more whacky adventures.  Especially the Bamboo River Boat Ride....can't wait.