The Train from Hell to Guilin, Plus A Brief Pass Through Guilin, Chinaby Randi / August 18, 2017
After weeks of hustling around China on crappy trains, we made it to the ‘relaxation’ portion of our 5+ weeks in this country – four days in Yangshuo, on the Li River. The area is quiet, a make-your-own-adventure sort of place, with incredible natural beauty both on and away from the river. I prefer water beauty, so the boat ride from Guilin to Yangshuo down the Li was my absolute favorite (abfav) part, which is a slight shame considering it barely counts as the beginning of this section. It only gets worse from here! No it was all fiiine. We’ll get there. The journey takes about four hours, and despite the chaos of the boat station (it cannot be called a marina or a ship terminal; the typical Chinese chaos makes it a boat station), the boats themselves were sleek and nice – with the usual full-volume phone noises and screaming children (and adults), naturally.
Our hotel/teahouse (it’s hard to tell what’s a hotel or hostel here; nice places are like, teahouses) in Yangshuo booked our boat tickets for us and had a bus (full of other tourists and other pickups, naturally) pick us up at our Guilin teahouse (the Traveling With, loveyou4eva) and take us all to the overflowing boat station, where a nice lady gave us all our tickets. Thanks to the Tea Cozy, our Yangshuo digs, we had Second Floor tickets and not just measly First Floor. Supposedly that means a better view, quieter/well behaved crowd, and an overall better, ‘upper floor’ experience. I think it definitely is worth it for the views – that’s what this boat ride is about! – but I laugh at you if you think elevation helps crowds of Chinese people behave civilly. Yes this trip is making me intolerant! Make it stop!
We were seated in a comfy chair section of 6 (all the floors on all the boats look like this, pretty surprising) with two Chinese couples, one with a child who was, let’s just say, not well behaved, as per uzh. At this point in our trip, Z was ill. He will downplay it now, in hindsight, but it was quite flu-ish and awful, so he just wanted to sleep, but this kid sitting with us wouldn’t let that happen. Actually no one onboard would let that happen. We took turns going out to the deck for pictures and fresh air (haha no that’s where everyone smokes there’s no fresh air in this country) (I guess we just went out for sunburn then, and lots of it (I’ve never been so tan I hate it)). At one particularly nice stretch of scenery early on, I asked Z if he wanted to go take a look for pictures and he said “I might go out just to throw a Chinese kid overboard.” We learned soon after that the parents sitting with us had just returned from a year at Oxford…so…oops. Unclear if they heard it, but they definitely speak English. But hey, your kid’s obnoxious.
There were so many other screamy kids that soon it all balanced out with noise coming from all angles, so it was okay? Is that how it works here? I especially loved this little girl who was wearing a shirt covered with PICTURES OF KRYSTEN RITTER. WHAT??? Whoooo do the parents think it is? Is she big here? I mean I hear Jessica Jones is great and I quite enjoyed Don’t Trust the B**** in Apartment 23 but on a toddler’s t-shirt? In China?! Such random shit here.
probably the best thing I’ve seen in all of Asia
The boat ticket includes lunch, but of course this being a lawless, orderless land, there’s no way to get a specific sort of meal, like, say, vegetarian. Everyone gets the same tray, and that tray includes stuck-together rice (not sticky rice, that’s different, just poorly cooked rice), frozen peas and corn, a section of breaded crayfish I think, and a section of breaded chicken strips. Cool. Cool cool cool cool. At least I had peas and corn and rice. I hated wasting the other food and it was frustrating that they didn’t have the option of not wasting it in the first place. The bar downstairs sold chicken nuggets and watermelon in addition to the regular soft drinks and potato chips so I had watermelon. Isn’t that so interesting.
Aside from the overall minor noise and the food issues though, this boat was so amazing. As usual, the signage was great; I got a few of the goods. The second picture is blursula so check the captions.
this sign says ‘Fallinto the Water Carefully” I mean if you say so
I think I would love a cruise through scenery like this, I guess they do them down the Yangtze. But then again it might be like just a loooong wavy version of the train journeys so far so maybe not. Dammit other people ruining everything. Well they didn’t ruin this. It was too beautiful!
It really was incredibly sunny, as you can see from my trademarked Sun Face.
have you ever seen a forehead so SHINAYYYY like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck scrub the deck and make it look SHINAYYY
pretties!
water buffalo!
I almost didn’t want the gorgeous ride to end, but I was excited to get to our boutique teahouse in the countryside of Yangshuo for four days of relaxation, swimming, hiking, biking, climbing, kayaking, whatever. Z chose the Tea Cozy Hotel, which had a very nice room with an amazing view from the balcony (which was too hot to go out on, but still, what a view).
apparently i just share pictures of toilets now on the reg
view of the balcony from the bed
view from the balcony
The biggest problem was the same problem that plagues all of China – despite many official ‘no smoking’ signs, the staff didn’t bat an eyelash at the many, many Chinese men (I don’t even think they were all guests, just like random taxi drivers and who knows who) who would smoke in the lobby and throughout the main floor, PLUS for a few nights our next door neighbors were smoking in the room, which is REALLY not allowed. Even the staff got the teensiest bit upset that someone was smoking in a room, but there was ‘no way of figuring out who it was’ apparently and while we had this conversation 4 different men were smoking near us in the lobby. FFS CHINA. (And yes, it was billed as a non-smoking hotel when we booked online.)
Another main drawback was that it didn’t have a pool, and like, the #1 activity in these parts is seriously ‘having a pool’. The staff had promised us months ago that we could use the pool at their sister property 1 kilometer away anytime we wanted, and that they’d take us there. That’s not the most convenient but hey it’s better than nothing! Of course, of course, this being wild west China, the pool at the resort had to be emptied the day we arrived for some reason, and this being a land of low-to-no technology, it took more than 3 days to fill it. So despite asking every day ‘can I please go swimming now?’, I was repeatedly told that, sorry, the pool only has a foot of water in it/two feet/three feet/red fish/blue fish. Only on our very last day was I able to go, and only because the sister property’s guests had apparently had enough and they were swimming even though the water STILL wasn’t up to the proper level! So the other staff told my staff ‘sure send her over there are people swimming anyway so who cares anymore.’ Thanks! It was a pretty nice pool, kind of cold and…I don’t think chlorinated? Also it wasn’t until I was leaving after my swimming time that someone decided oh right we should be constantly filling this pool to get it back up to normal and then stuck a hose in. I mean. Get your shit together.
pretty decent pool huh
This sister prop had really nice grounds (ours was just a single building) and apparently had a gym too, so I was a little disappointed at first that we didn’t choose this one, but like, I think I’d be even more pissed off if we chose the place that had a pool and paid for that amenity and then COULDN’T use the pool for three out of four days. If I were the guests there I’d be demanding money back.
So, our staff of apparent teenagers? felt bad? about how I couldn’t go swimming? and about the smoke? no I don’t think they did I think they just sensed my rage and didn’t want me to hulk out, so they gave us teacups as presents. Now, that’s a very nice gesture, don’t get me wrong, but you’ve heard about the state of our backpacks. We now have bubble-wrapped orbs sticking out of them, taking up valuable peanut butter space. I hate living out of a backpack.
We had all these high hopes for exploring the Yangshuo countryside, but Z’s illness got worse, or at least didn’t get better, which sucked for him, so one day we asked the staff if someone could drive us into town to a pharmacy we saw one night. They got a driver to take us TO A WITCH DOCTOR. We wanted to go to a regular (for China) pharmacy in the town where we could try to find recognizable stuff. Instead, we were driven to a dusty garage area where an old man stood at a dusty brown counter in front of a wall of hundreds of brown dusty bottles that an old woman sorted through for the small line of patients. It was, shall we say, not trustworthy. It was kind of frightening. But we couldn’t communicate what we actually wanted because the driver didn’t speak English, so we just went ahead with this freakshow. When it was our turn at the shack opening, we handed the witch doctor the list of symptoms that the hotel lady had written down for us. Then the old man and woman started sorting through no less than 18 different bottles of pills and sorting combinations of 18 pills into 7 different hastily folded little paper corners to hold them. Z was like ‘…this isn’t all for me, right? I have a bad cold maybe.’ But no, all those pills were for him. They communicated to take one combination of all 18 pills THREE TIMES A DAY. That is a LOT OF SHIT for what might just be a horrible cold and even for what could be the flu. TOO MUCH WITCH DOCTORING. Z was like…um…okay…sure…and then the witch doctor was like oh wait stop, and ALSO take two of these other pills that are in a regular foil pouch morning and night. We looked up the characters on the foil later and it was amoxicillin. Pretty sure he didn’t need that but whaaat. All of this medicine cost 18 yuan, or like, $2.75, so at least it wasn’t expensive to tempt fate like that.
Z did indeed take the pills a few times. I know! The next day, after 3 or 4 epic pill-swallowing sessions (SO F-ING MANY), he looked at me and was like WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING TAKING THIS I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS! I went into town and got him regular cough medicine (children’s, I think, best I could do).
Unfortunately, because of Z’s sickness, it hindered what we could do with these four days meant for exploring nature and being all outdoorsy and stuff. I mean, most importantly, poor Z was sick, yes that’s what I meant first. Further down the oh no list is how it affected my vacation of course. He just slept all day every day, pretty much. So I had that one day of swimming, I worked out a lot, we watched the one channel on the TV that had English movies (cut by ads at worse times than they do in the UK, which is quite a feat, like midsentence instead of the UK’s preferred right-as-a-sentence-ends-but-before-you-hear-the-enunciated-end-of-the-syllable-so-it’s-crazy-abrupt cuts), I went into the town by myself and had a shittonne of bubble tea, I went to a wacky expat’s wellness center for a yoga class (we’ll talk about that later). I should have done more myself, but a) I would have gotten so lost you can’t even believe, b) I probably would have gotten injured, knowing me, and then been injured AND lost, and c) it was a nice bed, so, we were lazy and it was nice. At least we still got to enjoy the incredible karst scenery from the nice bed. The karst scenery is the kind of limestone landscape that got eroded into cray cray bananapants shapes like caves and grassy hills and overall mountainous terrain that juts out of nowhere, so it seems, and surrounds the village with peaks that seem completely alien to what should be there, like they were dropped in from nowhere to make the area look like a foreign planet with huge peaks and valleys of green. It’s pretty awesome, and I guess I should have explored more by just like walking around it, but again, see above a, b, and c. The village our hotel was in was still the dusty dilapidated sort, and the town was only a slight improvement on that, so I think seeing the view from the balcony (from the bed) was probably the nicest way to enjoy the area. Or at least that’s the story I’m sticking to for my benefit.
Yangshuo town! Cute!
So about that yoga class…
There are two HappyCow places in Yangshuo town, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant we went to twice, called Lotus, and a Western hippie’s wellness center + cafe called Mood Food Energy Cafe, with juice, smoothies, salads, and other western health food like tahini sunflower burgers, plus massages, meditation, yoga and other classes. I was eager to try their yoga classes, and maybe get a massage or try the ‘tourmaline sauna’ that the owner had raved about when I visited the first day just to gather information. When I went back for yoga, my first of what I hoped would be daily classes, I went in assuming, because the owner was an English-speaking man and all the staff i’d seen so far were white, that it would be in English. Fair guess, right? Everyone was white! I was the first student to arrive so I made myself comfortable and stretched on a mat. It was a pretty nice studio. Then an older lady walked in. I pointed to the mat set up at the front of the room for the instructor and then pointed to her, asking ‘are you the instructor?’ She smiled and went over to that mat and lay down on her back and started doing scissor stretches with her legs and arms. So I copied her. For like five minutes. We just laid there kicking one leg up then the other just chilling and getting warmed up, I assumed. This is a lot of assuming that has happened by now. And then, three other people came in, plus a younger Chinese lady who said something to the older lady which I’m gonna guess is, “hey that’s my mat, I’m the instructor and that’s where I go”, and took her rightful place at the front. So I had spent five minutes following some random old lady’s old lady stretches because I thought she was the instructor, and she apparently thought I had said, ‘hey I got a mat out for you and put it at the front of the room, lady I don’t know and didn’t know was coming!’ So I was already deathly embarrassed before we even started.
There are two HappyCow places in Yangshuo town, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant we went to twice, called Lotus, and a Western hippie’s wellness center + cafe called Mood Food Energy Cafe, with juice, smoothies, salads, and other western health food like tahini sunflower burgers, plus massages, meditation, yoga and other classes. I was eager to try their yoga classes, and maybe get a massage or try the ‘tourmaline sauna’ that the owner had raved about when I visited the first day just to gather information. When I went back for yoga, my first of what I hoped would be daily classes, I went in assuming, because the owner was an English-speaking man and all the staff i’d seen so far were white, that it would be in English. Fair guess, right? Everyone was white! I was the first student to arrive so I made myself comfortable and stretched on a mat. It was a pretty nice studio. Then an older lady walked in. I pointed to the mat set up at the front of the room for the instructor and then pointed to her, asking ‘are you the instructor?’ She smiled and went over to that mat and lay down on her back and started doing scissor stretches with her legs and arms. So I copied her. For like five minutes. We just laid there kicking one leg up then the other just chilling and getting warmed up, I assumed. This is a lot of assuming that has happened by now. And then, three other people came in, plus a younger Chinese lady who said something to the older lady which I’m gonna guess is, “hey that’s my mat, I’m the instructor and that’s where I go”, and took her rightful place at the front. So I had spent five minutes following some random old lady’s old lady stretches because I thought she was the instructor, and she apparently thought I had said, ‘hey I got a mat out for you and put it at the front of the room, lady I don’t know and didn’t know was coming!’ So I was already deathly embarrassed before we even started.
And then it started, and it was in Chinese. The instructor spoke English and tried her best to repeat everything for me after she’d explained to the others, but there’s only so much time in a day so I’d hear like 3 minutes of Chinese explanation of a pose and its benefits or whatever, and then in English she’d simply say ‘reach your shoulders like this.’ So I didn’t get the maximum benefit, I imagine.
It would be fine, not knowing the language of instruction, if it were a yoga class like any I’d ever done before. And I’ve done yoga since I was like, 17. That’s a whole lot. But it wasn’t a flow or anything familiar, and she didn’t say the sanskrit names for poses. Because it wasn’t really a ‘doing poses’ kind of yoga! It was so herky jerky and random. Like, we did a few sun salutations to warm up, that was great and familiar. But after those two minutes, we all got belts, and she wrapped them around our shoulders and we reached overhead for like, 15 minutes. It hurt! I have extremely tight shoulders and upper back, which has only worsened this trip with the backpack, and she was not happy about that. So instead of being like every other yoga professional in the world and gently offering ways to improve or stretch in a certain way to safely expand on this movement, she hoisted the belt back and up so hard that she almost dislocated my shoulder, and I was screaming in pain and she kept pulling my arms up and up where they clearly would not and could not go, until I looked at her and said ‘stop!’ Like, are you kidding me? What kind of yoga is this! Is it just because you can’t sue for anything in China so they’re like screw safe practices?!
After we tore our shoulders apart, she had us wrap the belts around our thighs and do variations on chair pose for 20 minutes. I didn’t understand what kind of baby squat they were all doing until after she did her Chinese shpiel and then said to me, simply, ‘like chair pose.’ Thanks, finally! That was intense, obviously when held that long, and everyone was laughing through the pain but like, is this yoga? So strange. For this, since she kept wanting to pick on me for everything, she realized she hated my feet, like, a lot, and she tried to pull my big toes out to make them straight. I’ve told you before, I have bad bunions, so like, pulling my big toes to make them straight REQUIRES SURGERY, woman. After I realized what she was doing I was said ‘clearly they aren’t going to do what you want them to do, fake podiatrist!’ It was ridiculous! Was she trying to break bones to see if the center could heal them with crystals or something after? Or was she just an idiot? Needless to say, despite the great thigh DOMS I got later, I did not return as I had originally planned. What a shame! I was so excited for a real yoga class with other people after all these months of travel and then I find one with a crazy lady literally trying to break all my bones. If anything though, this kind of made me want to get certified as an instructor JUST SO I could balance out her awfulness in the instructor universe with my normal-yoga-doingness-that-doesn’t-lead-to-broken-bones.
After this super random class, I went downstairs and had dinner in the cafe. I was so excited for a big salad and other health food-y stuff, but honestly I have to say, while I liked the food okay, the service was abysmal. The friendly owner I had met days before wasn’t there, and it was full of all these women who were kind of glaring at me the whole time. There was an office-type room full of white women working on computers – I think getting massage training? according to some signs in the room? – and they just kept staring and giving me resting bitch face and I was like duuuuudeeeee what is wrong I changed my sweaty clothes what am I doing wrong? Despite how awkward it’s been for us as the only white people in a lot of these parts of China that we have trouble understanding and grasping, THIS was the most uncomfortable I’d felt in weeks – surrounded by other white women.
NOOCH SALAD!
I did get my big salad though, and guys, it was covered in nooch! Nooch! It’s been so long, I’d forgotten how much I loved it! Yay! It was a really good vegan health food store take on a Caesar, so, in fact, nothing at all like a Caesar, but just how I like it, a lot of lettuce and tofu and nooch. I also got salad rolls (so much salad!) that were fine, if needing a little more substance inside. I got that tahini-sunflower burger to go for Z plus a pita and hummus plate, which they wrapped up HILARIOUSLY with the hummus and other dips in those tiny tiny little plastic bags, like thumb-sized. Not enough hummus for your prices, guys! But clever packaging, I guess! The burger was decent (of course I ended up eating it the next day, Z’s first desired solid food in days was not going to be yoga center health concoctions) but the dips were weird. I wanted to try all the vegan desserts and smoothies and stuff but the service really was bad and honestly, despite seeming on the surface like a place tailor-made for me, I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. Kind of sad. But what an experience!
take out container pictures you love it
lolol it’s like they repurposed the tiny plastic bags that extra buttons on a Gap sweater come in and put hummus inside
A much better food experience awaited at Lotus Vegetarian, on the happening pedestrian West Street, near plenty of clubs and coffee bars and, a new fave, a place called Mango, where they specialize in mango smoothies of various sorts. I know! Amazing! We went to Lotus a few times and tried so much that was all pretty good, some great. They also bring you a dish of watermelon and a little set of peanuts, corn, and pickles right when you sit.
Above, we have my standard big ole plate of broccoli order, this time coming with black fungus (fun mushrooms) and noodles (because why not just throw noodles in everything); next is the Homestyle Tofu, which was very good; and then it’s the Guilin-style stir-fried bean noodles, tofu skin, and mixed vegetables. Loved this dish! It combines all my favorite things – vegetables, tofu skin, and beans in noodle form! Good stuff.
Above we have a huge plate of bok choy and mushrooms, most of which I put in our room fridge and had cold the next day, and then a really good black noodle dish with MORE bok choy (GIVE ME ANOTHER VEGETABLE MAYBE ONE DAY) and spicy tofu that was so spicy that I didn’t even realize at first that it was STINKY! It wasn’t TOO stinky so it was still good, but yeesh! China luuurves its stinky tofu!
Finally, we have this stupid hot (temperature! wasn’t spicy and also spicy is never stupid) fluffy tofu and vegetable claypot sort of jawn that was delicious, and probably my favorite dish from Lotus, the Kung Pao Chicken mockery. I tried to bring most of this on the train the day after ordering it; NB, bringing leftover Chinese food on a train is a bad idea. Eating all this stuff in a restaurant when it is cooked is a great idea though!
I only had one meal at the hotel, because the food was fine, but some of the staff members really put me off. Like they commented on how much food we ordered when it was literally like a salad, a tofu, and dumplings. That’s a normal amount of food for one hungry person, let alone two. Shut up. Anyway, the food was just okay. The tofu was really good but the dumplings were not. And guess what kind of salad it wassssss yes you know it.
that’s right
Dinner at the hotel was really only worth it because the other tables were occupied by a group of Italians, which led Z to make THE DAD JOKE TO BEAT THEM ALL: “What’s an Italian’s favorite Chinese food? CIAO MEIN.” oh my god it still hurts.
Lest you think Yangshuo town is all food fun and no drink fun, I must admit that my favorite part of this entire four day stay was my drinkage. I went to the aforementioned Mango a few times – there are outposts of various sizes on literally EVERY block – and got the regular mango smoothie (most others have milk) and a cup of plain mango. Each time, I tried a different bubble topping because as we know by now I am obsessed with the bubble tea bubbles. Mango has a CRAZY bubble/pearl menu. The first time I went, I didn’t realize that their offerings weren’t just the regular tapioca balls, and I was HORRIFIED when I bit into one and it was the juice-squirting kind. SO GROSS. I do not want a little thin-skinned ball full of fruit juice; I want chewy weirdness! Luckily my second attempt was a total win. For some reason I pointed to the pearl option that said sweet potato – I guess I was just super curious. Lo and behold, the little thin skin of the pearl ball gave way to an inside of cooked sweet potato! WHAT. Just tiny little droppings of cooked sweet potato inside the bubble ball pearl dot. Can you EVEN. Because I COULD NOT. I am so obsessed! WHO MAKES THESE.
Wonderful smoothie, GROSS BUBBLES
Good mango, AMAZING bubbles
But you know what’s coming. Obviously I saved the best for last. Right up the block from where our hotel’s shuttle (regular car and driver who I think only drove me around the whole week) picked up and dropped off was a GONG CHA! My favorite of the bubble tea chains! Now, I’m pretty sure that this is one of the fake, copyright-infringing imposter Gong Chas that Jojo warned me about, BUT, I think I actually liked it more than the real! I KNOW BUT HEAR ME OUT. What are my main requirements for good bubble tea? A menu with English translations that I can point to, with a section for adding bubbles, and a sugar level chart so I can get low-to-zero sugar. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK. And, unlike all the others, they actually listened and didn’t make my drinks diabetes in a cup like all the others. And what’s my favorite thing about bubble tea? THE BUBBLES. And this amazing imposter Gong Cha gave more bubbles than any other place! Like, to the point where I was STRUGGLING to catch them all after I’d finished the liquid. It was so great. I love that stupid fake shoppe.
One time we forgot to pay – we each thought the other had paid and the worker didn’t seem to notice – and we didn’t realize until we were at dinner later! Luckily we were still downtown, so we just went back after dinner and saw the guy and were like, we didn’t pay! And it wasn’t until we took money out of our wallets that it clicked for him and he was like ahhhhh you didn’t pay but I didn’t even realize you didn’t pay! Good thing too or we would be in a some scary Chinese jail. Where I doubt they give you bubble tea.
Given that the town had my favorite tea shop, a lot of mango smoothies, good vegetarian food, fun yoga adventures, and a decent overall vibe, I think I enjoyed my time there more than I did out at the remote teahouse – the complete opposite of what was supposed to happen. It’s just that Yangshuo is meant for nature-tourism, and aside from looking at the beautiful scenery, I didn’t actually do that. Maybe I squandered my time in the end, but I enjoyed myself in my own way. Also I slept a decent amount, which has been seriously lacking this summer so hooray! Despite its issues, we were able to relax at the Tea Cozy as intended and enjoy that view. So cool. Here’s one last piece of karst for you!
Related Posts
Hangzhou, China: Two Totally Different Towns in One
Hangzhou is an interesting mashup of a place. From the research we did, it seems like a small village on a big lake, with a neverending forest section that we’d be staying in, surrounded by hills and such lush trees, a calm respite from standard hectic China. But, like…Hangzhou has 9 million residents. I had never heard of it before planning this trip, and it was flipping TWO Philadelphias. And bigger than New York and London! Damn there are so many Chinese people! So even this like ‘small village’ that I hadn’t even heard of before this trip is a gigantic freaking city! Luckily, we were indeed staying in the west side of West Lake, the part that is all forests and much less people. And it’s beautiful. We went into the crazy busy downtown, but West Lake is the real draw of a visit here.
At first I was disappointed because our hotel, Best Wishes Inn, our supposed fancy lakeside getaway, was not very nice. And it wasn’t by the lake, which if you go, you should try to be right by. It was in the correct section of town, but in a little street with dirty shops and restaurants, not set back or remote from this sort of thing at all. And the lake was kind of far from us. But mostly I’m mad because they gave us the crappiest room they had – in the attic, so the roof slanted so short that we hit our heads a lot. The bed was just a mattress on the floor, and the sink was next to the bed. The bathroom was tiny – the shower head over the toilet situation – and there was no room for our luggage except right in the center/only pathway. Suffice it to say they way overcharged us. I tried to say well that’s just how accommodations are here, but then I saw every other room during our 3 nights while they were being cleaned, and they were all spacious and lovely and had actual beds, not just mattresses on the floor. What gives?! Apparently sometimes hotels will give you shitty rooms if they see you used a third party, but like, Booking.com? Really? It’s hard to believe. I can’t help thinking it was just because we were Westerners? Regardless of the reason my blood pressure is rising just thinking about it. But like, again, NO one there spoke English so how could I complain or even just ask wtf was going on? It was hard enough asking for more toilet paper through google translate.
Fortunately, that was the only letdown for me, because I quite enjoyed Hangzhou itself. It was cool (not temperature, it’s f-ing boiling and buggy) to stroll through the foresty parts to find the Buddhist temples (and, of course, their requisite vegetarian buffets), to hike to West Lake and then around the perimeter, and to explore downtown – while the latter is not strictly necessary (just like any big Chinese city), you will probably want to go there for a meal or two and – do I even need to say it anymore? – for bubble tea.
We arrived kind of exhausted after we had seen Nanxun that morning, so we rested and watched really weird Chinese teenage vampire soap opera TV. Wow. Then we made our way to the nearest HappyCow listing, the Qing Xin Vegetarian buffet at a near-ish temple complex, about 30 minutes walk away through the forest. It’s getting dark earlier now – no more northern Russia endless sunshine! – so that was a little rough at times with the streets not lit well, but we found the complex it was in – it had a KFC, a Pizza Hut, and two Starbucks! And lots of Chinese restaurants, of course. We queued up the name of the vegetarian buffet in Chinese and showed it to a lady in a convenience store, who helpfully showed us a staircase in the middle of the shopping center and pointed up. Thanks lady! We bought our drinks and stuff from her whenever we were nearby as thanks.
Unfortunately Qing Xin seemed to be closing down! It was only 6:30pm or so! Darn. A nice lady who worked there tried to communicate that it was shutting soon, but that I could take food from the 8 or so trays that still had some food in them. So, okay! I was hungry and we wouldn’t find anything else probably for an hour so I’ll eat the remnants of the monks’ dinner happily! The few dishes had enough to make a pretty decent plate of food, so it was fine. I scrounged up enough vegetables and tofu to be balanced, and then took a lot of this amazing thick noodle dish that I’m obsessed with now. It was sad to see rows and rows and rows of the food display empty, but we were coming back the next day to see the actual temples nearby, so we planned on coming back right when it opened for lunch! Yay! I finished my portion and went to find the nice lady to pay, and she motioned that I didn’t have to pay because I just took the scraps and it wasn’t the full thing. Sooo nice! I was like really? What country is this? Love her.
This is what the outside of the restaurant looks like…with or without the hilarious stretching child
We totally went back for lunch the next day, and it was PACKED. One of the volunteers spoke a little English and was eager to talk to me – he said they have exactly 100 dishes! That’s a lot of stuff for me to try! I ate a lot, and it was all so good! I loved this place. They were so nice too. I went and found the nice lady this time and she was like ahhh! So happy that we returned! So, the buffet cost 26 yuan, for all you can eat delicious food with the nicest staff. That is like…$4, max. Love it. I would eat there every day if I lived there. Which I don’t want to do, I’m just saying.
sooo packed at lunch!
so many rows of food!
the inside of the complex the restaurant is in (also where you buy tickets for the Longyin Temple and grounds
Because it was so busy, everyone shares tables so all the seats are occupied. We were sitting with a mother and her young son, and the son was studying English so he was talking to us a little. So, this was the first English speaker we’d encountered in DAYS! So exciting! What great things would he say to us that we’d be so happy to understand? First, he told me his mother was upset because I was using chopsticks wrong. I hold them too low, apparently. But that gives me more control! Leave me alone! But that wasn’t enough. The kicker was later when he just looked up at me and asked, “How do you eat so much?” JFC, kid.
After our great meal, we bought tickets for the temple grounds so we could see Lingyin Temple, the most famous one, and all the other temples on the grounds. Neither the book nor the ticket lady for the temple grounds told us this, but you need SEPARATE tickets for Lingyin Temple. See I DO give helpful tips YOU’RE WELCOME. Anyway, they aren’t that expensive and it’s worth it to see all of this because there aren’t that many sights in Hangzhou besides exploring the natural beauty. And by visiting these temples, you are seeing some serious natural beauty simultaneously!
It was so beautiful. And here, in the temples, we saw our first non-Chinese tourists in days. There’s like a weird nod of recognition that everyone gives each other, I don’t know if they’re even aware they’re doing it. Very tribal and strange.
So Lingyin is Hangzhou’s most famous Buddhist temple, which I guess is why it’s the only one on the grounds with a separate entry ticket. It was built in 326 but what’s there now is not the original – it was destroyed and rebuilt 16 times! There’s lots of grand Buddha et al. statues, including a grand one that’s 20 meters high and built from camphor wood. Lingyin is a pretty pleasant temple and even has a vegetarian noodle restaurant onsite.
The only very upsetting thing about the temples was that one of the important rooms in Lingyin, full of various Buddha statues, was shaped like a swastika. I think it’s the backwards Chinese buddhism kind, so, the ‘good kind’, but it’s never not offputting to see one. To be in one and stuck like a maze till the end was weird. It was very strange walking around and being like dude what IS this building’s shape we are going like in L’s?? and then going…ohhhhhh I know what this is. So weird. There are swastikas all over the trashcans and signs and stuff too (and we saw some in Beijing temples). Do not like.
Other than that, it was a nice visit. It requires several hours to see even part of what’s out here. I think I enjoyed the Yongfu temple up at the top of the grounds the most, which has a short climb to a viewing platform of the lake. We were excited for that, but the lake was still far away so it’s like a baby view.
babiest lake view!
The walk around this temple was gorgeous though, and honestly if you are pressed for time I think I would choose this visit over Lingyin. But it’s cool to see as much of this area as you can, if you have time.
My favorite thing in Hangzhou though was probably walking to and around West Lake. It’s really beautiful. And yes it’s super crowded with Chinese tourists who don’t know how to walk in public, but it’s worth it.
The first time we saw the lake, we were en route downtown and chanced upon this photoshoot!
For our full day of West Lake sightseeing, we walked from our hotel through about an hour and a half of unoccupied forest, with really nothing along the way but nature and old bridges and things. It was such a nice surprise to find such empty bits!
As we got closer to the busier parts of the lake (like where resorts are), things started to pick up in terms of people and shops and sights.
I had to pee really badly at one point and we saw a sign pointing into a resort or something, so we wandered through the resort grounds, which were so lovely, and found it. But then we noticed that if we kept going farther inward, away from the street we were walking on, we would reach a really busy shopping center area right on the part of the lake we wanted, where all the boats are! So thank goodness I had to pee because we found the spot we wanted!
And thank goodness also because this shopping center was amaaazing. If you follow me on instagram (which you should, links at the top of the page), you saw the incredible mango drink I had here. I saw people getting these gigantic towers of smoothie with dry ice pouring out of it! It was so fun! I got one of course after watching them make one and confirming it was just mango blended with ice in the smoothie part. Then the dry ice container was fitted in, and then a cup of mango shaved ice was put on top, all topped with chunks of fresh mango. It was SO GOOD and so fun!
I should have taken video, I know now! Just imagine dry ice shooting out every which way like a fog machine!
But that wasn’t even my favorite find of this center, because next door was a little shop selling a Chinese sort of pirozhok, the Russian stuffed bread rolls. I confirmed with the few important words I learned which were vegetarian, and got a cabbage filled one. I really should have gotten 100 of them and somehow froze them and shipped them to London for studying, or just eaten 100 immediately, because they were one of the best things ever. I was obsessed. They were just perfect. Dammit I want one now. I have to learn how to make pirozhki when home. I will blog about it if I do.
We kept walking through the beautiful waterfront for awhile until we reached the causeway that would let us cross part of the lake. It was so fun!
I really enjoyed this walk and this whole part of Hangzhou and West Lake. So beautiful and tranquil despite all the people.
Another super tall lotus pond, like in Nanxun! Tall as me !
What’s not tranquil is Hangzhou town. It’s not bad, it’s just not worth it. It’s another big super crowded and busy city where motorbikes will drive right at you even if they have a red light and there are thousands of abandoned rideshare bicycles blocking the sidewalks and there are too many cars and people and it’s hot and smelly so like, what’s the point when you can stay by the lake?
Oh right, bubble tea. I was on a mission. Such a mission, that I ended up having 3 teas in one evening! The first one was a let down because the fruit teas often don’t come with bubbles and they didn’t understand my request for them. UGHHH. It was a tea stand that wasn’t a recognizable chain – always stick with the ones with a little table on the menu with bubble options you can point to!
The second was decent, but it wasn’t a Gong Cha or Coco (the famous chains) but a 1Tea, which I really like now, but I didn’t know then (my first from them) that when you say zero sugar to them (who am I kidding – I mean when you point to the zero sugar option on the menu), it actually IS zero sugar (at the others, it’s still sweet!). And I got a lemon tea drink, so it was suuuper sour and hard to enjoy the bubbles.
But then we found a third! And it was a Gong Cha! It was too sweet of course and I was suuuper sick from having so much tea in such a short period but I couldn’t turn it down!
what my other fave restaurant in Hangzhou looks like
The food in Hangzhou aside from my favorite aforementioned buffet was good, as it is in all the cities in China! Flipping Chinese food is amazeballs and so vegan-friendly. I especially liked a place called Super Vegan, for obvious reasons! It was very nice inside, the common type of vegetarian restaurant here where I feel underdressed – the opposite of so many vegan places in the west that are so casual and hippie like. I am so impressed with the array of vegan restaurants in China’s big cities. At Super Vegan (which, by the way, just says Vegan on the awning, not super), I had to try several dishes that I found recommended in the HappyCow reviews, like this plate of sweet and sour spare ribs. So far in China, every time I get spare ribs it’s small pieces like this, not like how they do it in the USA. Might be just the vegan versions, but might be for real too.
These were freaking fantastic! In fact, all the food at Super Vegan was, and I wish I could eat here again. The texture was perfect, reminiscent enough of meat’s pull-apartness and chewiness without being disgustingly close or too hard or soft. I usually don’t like sweet and sour stuff but this could change my stance on the whole issue.
I also got a big ass plate of broccoli with some mushrooms in vegetarian oyster sauce, mostly because I need a big plate of greens as often as possible, but also because veggie oyster sauce! So fun! It was great, as most broccoli is. Then I got the Taiwan-style sauteed rice noodles, with veggie meat, cabbage, carrot, and mushrooms. It didn’t have as much of the non-noodle parts as the menu picture suggested, but still, really good!
Almost embarrassed to share the next picture, but come on, you know me – if there’s one on the menu when I’m traveling, I’m GONNA get it:
SORRY NOT SORRY.
It had avocado and quinoa in it! Super Vegaaaaannnnn!
Lastly, we got the most inventive, delicious, and all around amazing dish on the menu. Okay that’s a bold statement because as always in Chinese vegetarian restaurants the menu was 1000 pages long, and we got five things only, but this was off the charts. It was just called Golden Suncake, and the ingredients on the menu said “green bean, pumpkin, and soy protein”. I had no idea what we’d get, despite the picture, which was very vague and sort of dumpling looking. What came out, was a vegan replica of a fried egg, with a mashed pumpkin center. Not just any fried egg. The most delicious one ever. It was PERFECTION. Eggy and the perfect texture but without being too weirdly gross eggy, and with that pumpkin yolk part? Ridiculously good. Also TELL ME how this is made of green beans?!
We enjoyed the food so much that we got an order of the tea tree mushrooms, “Yu mountain style”, to go. They were fried strips of mushrooms that looked in the picture like French fries, and, even better, looked in real life and tasted like fried clam strips! Amazing! Oh man, if you are ever in Hangzhou, go to Super Vegan, get all the food, get more to go, tell them I said hi, just kidding, Marky, pick up your phone.
We enjoyed our time in Hangzhou! We were there for a while, but we didn’t do as much as we’ve been doing in other cities. It was nice to not rush around, to get to relax and go do things when we wanted and not when we must in order to fit them into a tight schedule. We have plenty of that coming, but it was important to realize that more easygoing stretches are okay, and necessary. And look how beautiful it was – outside the city. Haha I just realized I didn’t even take pictures of downtown! Eh you can imagine it – traffic, more traffic, lots of people. Stick to West Lake! It’s really as beautiful as they say.
Muscat Susie, Muscat Sam: Oh Man, Did We Enjoy Oman
Oman wasn’t on our list for very long – in fact, it might be the fastest we’ve ever decided to go somewhere and then gone. Last year we heard several unrelated wonderful reports about this gem of a country in the Middle East and then suddenly, we were off! (And I was going to be so close to Chandler next door in Yemen, living it up with that rando he met on the plane and/or at 15 Yemen Road.) Between the charming little city of Muscat and the incredible wadis (like my favorite place, Wadi Shab) and sinkholes we swam in around the country, we had a fabulous time. Whether you’re an explorer, a history buff, a water-feature-lover (me), or just in the mood for a super fancy resort vacation (but don’t only stay in the resort), I highly recommend a visit to Oman.
You will definitely need to rent a car, which sucks for people like me who hate driving, especially in foreign lands where you don’t read the language. So, after our super pleasant and short flight from Dubai (which you read about last week, right?) on Swiss Air (which was outfitted like an old professor; I don’t know something about the light wooden detail and the tweed vibe on that plane read ‘professor’), we landed at Muscat International Airport SUPER late at night and SUPER needing to do two specific things: 1) get a SIM card for the phone, and 2) pick up our rental car. You’d think these would be simple since they are most everyone’s 2 things to do! Both the SIM and the Budget rental car people were the. worst. ever. So rude and they took forever so we were well into the wee hours of the morning before we were on our way to the hotel. And that wasn’t even the worst part: I had a full panic attack driving to the hotel because I am the navigatrix, and Google maps had NO IDEA ABOUT MUSCAT. Just never heard about it, I guess. So I was flipping, and I mean flipping, out because I had no idea what to tell Z to do and we kept getting farther away from the city center and we don’t read Arabic so it was terrifying.
Finally somehow we found our hotel. (If you’re driving, print out directions from the airport just in case your maps app also decides it needs 24 hours to start working properly.) During our time exploring, we stayed at the Intercontinental Muscat, which sounds fance because the IC usually is, but this was (known in advance to be) a quite dingy one, with motel-looking rooms. It was more affordable this way, and it was undergoing an extensive remodel while we were there, so while we were lucky to snag the lower prices, we missed out on the nicer rooms. But since we were going to be busy sightseeing (and driving around the country) all day, we didn’t need to be anywhere fancy. No, we were saving that for the second half of our trip, which you’ll see in the next Oman post.
After sleeping, omg sleeping is THE BEST, we explored Muscat the next morning, first by making our way up to the fort area at the north of the city. It’s like a bunch of forts and government buildings and noooo one around, which was cool for exploring and…interesting for my usual fear of “has the world I Am Legended or something?”
Muscat curves along the water (the Gulf of Oman) with various corniches lined with mosques, souks, and cafes (and banks and all other markings of civilization, except we don’t have Habib Bank which is a shame because it’s so close to my favorite thing to shout (HABIBI!) and if there was a Habibi bank I’d be like here take my money). What I consider the main drag of the waterfront, along Al Bahri Road, is right where Mutrah Souk and the Gold Souk are located.
You have to pay to park along the corniche, and while there are plenty of spots, it’s kind of annoying because it’s those newfangled machines (I hate MACHINES) and they only take 50p coins (I know it’s ‘p’ but I don’t know their abbreviations for the smaller denominations) so you have to go buy a tea or something in a nearby cafe and ask for change in 50p coins. But now you know so you can just make sure to have them handy! Who says you don’t learn from me?
I guess this is as good a time as any to share some DEETS about their currency in Oman. It’s the Omani rial! One rial breaks into 1000 baisa, so when I said 50p coins you (like me originally) probably brained that as ‘half their dollar or whatever’, but it’s not half, it’s 1/20!!!! That’s rial small! I hope I did that math right otherwise I’ll be rially embarrassed. One rial is about $2.6 USD, so 10 rials is like $26 and you can generally figure out whether most things are cheap or pricey knowing that. As a destination, it’s cheaper than most of Western Europe, but more expensive than I assumed. You can find super cheap food and stuff but overall it’s much less of a post-Dubai steal than I wanted.
Before or after exploring the coastline and the souks, you’ll want to hit the main cultural museum to learn about Oman and Omani culture. That’s why you’re here! The very nice and informative museum is called the Bait Al Zubair, opened to the public since 1998. Comprising six different buildings and lots of outdoor space, the museum features exhibits on Omani culture and heritage in terms of dress, jewelry, weapons, food, history, furniture, money, housing, and more, including two big ass cannons.
We learned all sorts of info from the museum, but honestly the most compelling info-graphic was about the first postal stamp. Whoever wrote the sign explaining how Britain issued the first government-printed postage stamp on May 6, 1840 was INTO the history of stamps. They honestly sounded like a nerdier version of me, using all caps and everything to make a point! I KNOW! In a museum! It was adorbs. They were like ‘before 1840 the RECEIVER of the letter had to pay for the costs of delivery, but then Mister Sir Rowland Hill became British Postmaster General and he thought the SENDER should pay the price and that was the first time this happened aren’t stamps EXHILARATING?’ no but it’s a good change, Rowland. Could you imagine having to pay for the shitty mail you get? I’d be like hard pass.
Maybe you want to learn about Muscat and not the history of stamps in the U.K. So that means it’s time for our favorite Laughfrodisiac travel feature, your completely accurate history lesson.
So Oman is a Sultanate, along with Brunei and parts of Indonesia and Malaysia, which makes it baby’s first Sultanate visited! I did not see that pudgy little doofus who let Jafar manipulate him, no I did not, I would have given him a talking to. A talking down to, if you will, because I’m still mad at his initial treatment of his daughter and also because he so smol. (I’m OBVIOUSLY joking, Omani officials, and would never speak ill of your actual sultan who is also prime minister? It’s an absolute monarchy over there. (that’s the actual phrase I’m not saying like oh it’s an absolute monarchy; no it’s an ‘absolute monarchy’ it’s a thing.)) My fave thing is that there’s no clear answer about where the name came from (probably someone just saying ‘oh mannn’ like I did) but some think it’s related to writing from Pliny the Elder, which tickles me because I forking LOVE Pliny the Elder, one of my fave elders.
Muscat is Oman’s capital and largest city, and archaeological finds (fishermen graves, so sinister) date the city, an important port, as having communities since 6,000 years before Jesus was like ‘oh hayyyy oh you don’t care about me.’ And then pre-Iranians invaded dun dun dunnn and then they all converted to Islam and then there were all these battles between different tribes and then Marcos Baghdatis’s people invaded (not Cyprus, Baghdad…I see how this gets confusing but stick with me) but then Omani tribes were like gtfO Marcos, it’s Wimbledon time, and then power shifted between native tribes for a bit and all this time the importance of Muscat as a port city between powerful civilizations grew and grew, causing some animosity from people not by the city/water, like how England hates Londoners because we’re the most important.
But then in the 1500s the Portuguese were like ‘o bom dia I’ma gonna takeover you nowah’ (the Portuguese sounded Italian!) and they fought but the Portuguese won and they were like ‘Muito prazer em conhecê-lo but I’ma burna your city to the groundah!’ and they did. They ruled till later in the 1600s when the Imam was finally like FORK THIS and sent troops to Muscat and toppled the power of the Portos. Then there were civil wars which are NEVER good and the Persians kept interfering and trying to take over like ‘oh but itsa my turn to ah rule you!’ (they sound Italian too) but they even though they didn’t get the chance they still contributed to the whole region being destabilized which is rude. The need for cohesive rule let the Al Bu Sa’id dynasty emerge and rule ever since, but not without lots of dramaaaz like even in the last century there was a civil war, from friction between the sultan and the imams and all the interior tribes being like what gives and the sultan asked the British to help quell the rebels (they’re good at that, and stamps), and then the sultan’s son, current ruler Qaboos bin Said al Said, famously staged a bloodless coup to take the seat of power from his father, with the help of the British. It was a very William vs. Charles in the play King Charles III situation.
Well that’s enough history for lunatics so let’s go to one of Qaboos’s favorite places, the mosque. How do I know it’s one of his favorite places? It’s called the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Construction of the mosque took six years seven months in the 1990s, which is fun because the American version, Six Days Seven Nights, also took place in the 1990s.
It’s an incredibly beautiful, tranquil place, despite having so many tourists visiting – it’s so big that you’re not even bothered by other people (ew other people). Civilians like me (non-Muslims) are allowed to visit the Grand Mosque in the mornings from Saturday to Thursday, so make sure to plan accordingly. You must cover all your damn skin, which you should do in the serious sunshine anyway, but women must also cover their hair. And they are serious about this. I had the pictured headscarf dutifully wrapping me up, but I have hella long and unmanageable hair, and a lock of it fell through the bottom at the back, and a guard yelled at Z to tell me to fix it. (Obviously he spoke to Z and not me, because the man is in charge of the women, because religion.) The language barrier made for a fun exercise in ‘but my hair is covered!’ arguments, not being able to see that a tiny piece was visible on my back. Stupid sinful lady hair!
Aside from mean old guard, it was a really lovely visit. It’s confusing to know where to park and where to enter properly, but we just followed other people from the first parking lot we found and figured it out.
Aside from food-related activities and hotel swimming, which come in their own post (the fun one with the previously hinted resort vacation), that’s pretty much what we did in Muscat! From our base in the city, we took several day trips out into the country, to various sinkholes for more swimming (yay!), to Wadi Shab (my FAVORITE part of this trip (you’ll see that in its own post, with the sinkholes)), and to Nizwa, for the Nizwa Fort and Souqs. Although we enjoyed Nizwa Fort, it was a long way to go (about 2 hours each way) on really busy roads, when we could have used that time to see a lot more educational stuff left in Muscat. I’d only recommend going if you’re heading out of Muscat to stay in another town, or if you have a ton of time.
Even though we admit we probably should have used this day better, it was nice to see the Nizwa Fort. It was built in the 1600s by the Imam Sultan (both things!) Bin Saif Al Ya’rubi, but the underlying structure of this gigantic fort dates back to the 1200s. It’s really architecturally impressive, with a giant drum tower, enormous underground foundations, and endless sections and rooms on different levels showcasing all the good stuff you normally find in defensive structures: battlements, turrets, cannons, food storage, housing, jails, and literally MURDER HOLES: if the windy stairs and secret passages and defensive attacks weren’t enough to impede enemies, there were shafts above each set of doors that people poured boiling oil or water through to stop them. Murder holes. Cool guys. Can’t you just hear Mindy St. Clair going “I call it my murder hole.”
Entry to the Nizwa Fort cost us 5 rial each, so like almost $30 for the both of us, which is LOADS more than any other tourist attraction in Oman cost us. So that kind of bothered us, even though this was cool.
It was a super hot and sunny day when we visited, which was rough because so much of it is outside in the blazing heat and it’s SO climby. As I said before, the various sections are on all different levels, which means lots of stairs. And just when you think you’ve gotten as high as you can possibly go, to the top section, you’re met with these stairs:
Sure they just go up and then down again, but there’s a VIEW UP THERE. We had to do it! Fun fact: There were four sets of these triangle staircases around this tower, and we climbed up and down each one, to capture all the different views.
The Nizwa Fort did have the g-d coolest bathroom signs I’ve ever seen in my life, so that’s something. Look what the men got, it’s so badass.
Afte the fort, we planned to visit the famous souqs, but they were closed! It’s okay though, we weren’t going to buy vegetables, although it was nice to see where my fave souq would have been.
So we had some fun learning about Muscat and Oman, and the posts to come will be about even more fun stuff! Stay tuned.
