{"id":978,"date":"2011-02-26T19:17:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T11:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=978"},"modified":"2011-02-26T19:17:41","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T11:17:41","slug":"rapid-city-sd-usa-er-yangshuo-guangxi-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=978","title":{"rendered":"Rapid City, SD, USA….er…Yangshuo, Guangxi, China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 12 – “You wanna pay HOW much to see a TREE?” <\/strong><\/p>\n

I was supposed to travel to the rice terraces on this day.\u00a0 My traveling companions, Tom, Radek, and Aga convinced me to stay at This Old Place for one more night.\u00a0 They didn’t really have to try very hard. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 So, we began the day by taking the local bus to Yangshuo.\u00a0 I had previously spent about 10 minutes in this city…enough time to get off one bus and get right on another.\u00a0 Yangshuo is a pretty neat looking city.\u00a0 Imagine the karst mountains from the previous post and in addition to the river, put a city there too!\u00a0 There are TONS\u00a0of foreigners here.\u00a0 It is Backpacker Junction.\u00a0 Also, coincidentally, it is the sister city to Rapid City, SD.\u00a0 There’s your fun bit of trivia for the day.\u00a0 You will all sleep better knowing that.\u00a0 (by the way–I got that tidbit of information on the wikipedia website about Yangshuo as I was planning my trip)<\/p>\n

We spent the first two hours walking around (all while being followed by a man wanting to rent us his bikes.)\u00a0 And then we found it!!!!!!!!!!\u00a0 A Chinese Puzzle Shop!!!\u00a0 (For any of you that actually know me well, you will understand how exciting this was for me.) \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 I wanted to stay there the rest of the day and solve all the puzzles.\u00a0 (They were all\u00a0wooden-type puzzles (not jigsaw), some are blocks of wood, others are wood with strings, wood with metal…etc…) I was in heaven!\u00a0 I didn’t actually get a picture of the shop. I’m regretting that as I write.\u00a0 So, we did spend a bit of time here as Yours Truly tried to decide which puzzle to buy…because there would definitely be buying going on.\u00a0 There were a few that were easier, so I didn’t buy those.\u00a0 Then I found one that I fell in love with.\u00a0 It is all wood and has many blocks that all have to fit inside a square.\u00a0 Each block 5 cubic units in volume, but each one is a different shape.\u00a0 (except one block which is only four cubic units and is in the shape of a square.) The goal of this puzzle is to put all of the pieces into the box so it fits exactly.\u00a0 Needless to say, whenever I had ANY downtime for the rest of the trip, I was playing! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

After the puzzle shop we found a place to rent bikes.\u00a0 That was our main goal for heading into Yangshuo that day.\u00a0 So, we bargained our price for the bikes…actually, the man wanted to rent us mopeds but I quickly vetoed that.\u00a0 (No, I’m not a chicken.\u00a0 Another Beijing FOC friend got rear-ended on a moped and broke his collarbone not to much before this day.)\u00a0 I had a sweet mountain bike. (I’m sort of a bike snob now after using my sweet-awesome bike in Beijing) \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We were off for the day. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 We immediately biked out of town to find Moon Hill and the big Banyan Tree.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Here is a photo of me (front), Aga (next), and Radek (back) on our bikes outside of town. It was a beautiful day for a bike ride!<\/p><\/div>\n

We had lots of fun interacting with the locals while riding.\u00a0 It was on this bike ride that we tried sugar cane also.\u00a0 Eventually we made it to the Big Banyan Tree.\u00a0 (Now, people, for those of you who have this at the top of your priority list when visiting China, I can tell you that you might want to skip it. Sorry to burst your bubble.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

So, It wasn't just a tree. It was a whole park. You could do a bamboo raft ride by yourself if you wanted to. You could stand on a raft and have your picture taken. Many types of food were available on a stick. We were there for about 30 minutes. We saw some monkeys. That's all. A really big tree. A really big waste of money. <\/p><\/div>\n

After the tree we pressed on toward Moon Hill.\u00a0 This was another karst mountain but with a really big hole in it.\u00a0 Again, we had to pay to climb it.\u00a0 (What is it with these people and their entrance fees for nature?)\u00a0 I wasn’t all that interested in climbing the hill.\u00a0 I mean, I had just trekked the gorge, scaled another mountain to see the sunset, and would soon be trekking around the rice terraces. Do I really want to climb another one? Fine. It’s here. Why not?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is Moon Hill. It wasn't as bad of a hike as the other mountain. We only climbed to the opening. It was okay.<\/p><\/div>\n

After visiting Moon Hill we began our journey back to Yangshuo.\u00a0 Along the way we had fun again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

"Hello, Bamboo!" This truck turned on a road next to us as we were stopped. About two minutes later, it turned past us again. \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

This was Tom the German trying to be cool. He's also sitting on the bar in one picture but this one is cooler. Also: do you see the red lantern-type things hanging in the trees? We saw these 'lantern' things the ENTIRE bike ride. I would not want to have been the person whose job it was to hang them. <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

After making it back to Yangshuo, we found a restaurant for supper, (and also ran into the German couple from the train) .\u00a0 We grabbed some cheap Chinese beer for the bus ride back to Xingping.\u00a0 When we got back to the hostel we taught Norman how to get on Facebook in China! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aga and Radek asked me if they could tag along to the rice fields the next morning! Great!\u00a0 Tom said he would catch up to us the following day!\u00a0 So, I still had my travel buddies for the next few days!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 12 – “You wanna pay HOW much to see a TREE?” I was supposed to travel to the rice terraces on this day.\u00a0 My traveling companions, Tom, Radek, and Aga convinced me to stay at This Old Place for one more night.\u00a0 They didn’t really have to try very hard. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 So, we began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":989,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}