Don't worry or go to the bathhouse! China-2017. Part 22. China is beautiful, China is terrible.
Yangshuo - Guangzhou 2017-06-13 . br />
Of course I love contrasts. After candy, eat a piece of herring, for example. Or wash your hair with ice water, if you suddenly run out of hot water. Contrasts add volume and color to life. Don't get bored. And as you remember, Nadia and I were already a little bored)
Although, I'll tell you, this day could well do without shaking, we woke up in a wonderful mood, the sun was shining outside the window, and the day promised to be bright. We had a good plan on how to spend this, in fact, the last day of the trip.
Why the last, if there are still three days ahead? Because then we planned to relax in the bathhouse, have fun shopping and slowly get home. And the true journey ended in Yangshuo.
Of the three days that we have allocated for Yangshuo, this day promised to be the most beautiful. And our expectations did not disappoint. Until the evening the mood was upbeat. But at night. . .
But everything is in order)
We extended the room until the evening for half price. Still, it's nice to lie down in front of the road, take a shower, calmly gather. The price of this room allowed such excesses.
We went to the Enjoy cafe for breakfast, but it was too early and it was closed, on the contrary, next to the grocery store, a similar cafe was discovered and it was already working. I asked - is there coffee, is it definitely there, is it available, is that for sure? I was assured that exactly, exactly, but when we got a basket of food and sat down at a table, a waiter came up to us and said that we had to wait ten minutes for coffee.
Oh damn it.
It was not part of our plans to wait, we paid for the food and took it with us. We go out into the street thinking what to do now, whether to wait for the opening of our beloved Enjoy or go to the bus station area, and we will see from there? But Enjoy just opened and the following dilemma arose: all the buns, pies, sandwiches, exactly the same in these two cafes, and the food is on the shelves in the public domain, will they accuse us of stealing the goods and will they make us pay again.
- You go and ask, - Nadia tells me, - and I'll stand on the street with sweets.
There are no visitors in the cafe yet, a sleepy, smiling girl stands behind the bar and another, rather gloomy, drags whole boxes of fresh goodies and places them on the shelves.
I ask if we can bring our own food if it's exactly the same as theirs.
- Are you sure you have coffee?
- Exactly, exactly)
I order coffee, call Nadya and we sit by the window with our pundiks and hot coffee.
And then a girl comes up to us, the one who is sleepy, and gives our wallet. I left it on the counter!
The fact that I am confused and do not keep two thoughts in my head has long been known, but thank you very much to the girl for not being tempted. The money there was common, set aside for the whole day, night and a bath.
It’s time to say a big thank you to Nadya, too, for she didn’t kill me right there neither before nor after, she didn’t give me the general money in my hands and she controlled the need to replenish it. Taking care of money is almost too much work for me.
The morning turned out to be sunny, the heat rolls over the city rapidly, so we don’t stretch the tea party for a long time, we go to look for a bus.
I asked Vinsky's forum where the bus stop was, which goes to the bus station, and I remembered from the prompts that if you go from Western Street, you don't need to cross the road. But on the spot it becomes obvious what is needed, otherwise we will go towards the river. We look around, who to ask, we see a travel agency nearby.
- Qing wen, gogoncichezhang bei tsenmechu? (Tell me, please, how to get to the northern bus station? ) - the phrase is simple, I have said this many times, but they don’t understand me here. Do you remember that China has two hundred and ninety-two languages?
- Don't you know? (Where are you going? )
- Women chu gongonqichezhang bei! (We're going to the northern bus station)
I think my pronunciation is misleading them, pointing to a picture of a bus.
- Jaegee! (That thing) Zhang! (Station)- I show a roof over my head with my hands, symbolizing a house for buses. - Gonogonqichezhang! (Bus Station) Gongongqichebeizhang! Bay! (Untranslatable pun)
When my patience snapped, a guy appeared out of nowhere with a radiant smile, a melodious Hello and a translator on the phone. Write, he says. Please switch to Russian, throws up his hands. English only.
-Stand here! - I tell him and run after Nadya.
Nadia does not really believe in the success of our enterprise, she already has experience, but I do not give up. We, I say, have already come close to the answer.
The guy, having heard Nadine's question in English, abruptly forgot even Hello. Correspondence in the translator did not clarify anything. After each Nadia question how to get to the northern bus station, the question from the guy followed - where do we actually need to go. Chinese with Jewish roots.
Finally, we got bored and we run across the road, just as the bus is coming. The driver actively nods at my "gonogonqichezhang bay". All employees of the travel agency went out into the street and look thoughtfully after the bus. Either they worry about us, or they are sad that they didn’t find out where, in fact, we need to.
And we are heading to the six-hundred-year-old Fuli Bridge, which very old, survived all the local dynasties and attracted me very much. We have a map with a mark, a photograph of the bridge, a paper with the name of this bridge in Chinese, and even the town through which the bus we need will go is written with all Chinese honors in the eighteenth simsan font. To be sure. And you think we just got to the right bridge right away? No, of course)
First we got to the northern bus station who would have thought
then, on the bus we needed, we reached a fork in the road we didn’t need, and on foot, along a country road, three days in the field, two days in the forest we reached the bridge.
But the bridge is not the same) We got to the Golden Dragon Bridge, which, in fact, was the inscription on the glass of our bus and I still doubted at first.
We showed photos and hieroglyphs to everyone we met, but still we were sent along the trodden path. The main tourist is looking for a bamba. A bambu is looking for a tourist.
Near the Dragon Bridge, we orientated ourselves, trampled a little and went back. Wandered the wrong way, came back again. Several people were interested in the chunali we need, and one was even so insistent that we bought from him a ride on a motorbike to the bridge and rafting on the bamba. It began to rain, we understood that we would be brutally tired until we found the right bridge, so we didn’t really resist. No, of course, I tried to bargain, but Nadya said her creative “let's go”, and the uncle smiled sweetly and said that there are no lower prices. For a motorcycle trip 30 yuan, for a bamba 300 yuan personally in the hands of an uncle who went to get tickets himself apparently for him a bambu costs 100.
The road to the bridge unexpectedly turned out to be long, the rain intensified, but we were all over the place under the umbrella. I admire the Chinese. How could you come up with an umbrella for a motorcycle so that it does not bend when moving? )
At the Fuli Bridge, we see exactly what we expected - spaciousness and pastel.
Rain and fog add atmosphere to the landscapes. Everywhere you turn, shanshui are ancient Chinese paintings in the style of "mountains and water".
What is the point of looking at the Chinese mountains without fog? Well, mountains and mountains. And as soon as the fog descends, the mountains immediately - wow - turn into a fantastic landscape from an ancient Chinese scroll.
Wide strokes of mist and blurry watercolor of mountain outlines. I can just see a column of hieroglyphs shining calligraphically on the canvas.
This is my China, it's beautiful.
To the cheerful shouts of local loafers - hug him tight, baby! - we are going to the main bambu-pier. Everything is civilized here - the ticket office, turnstiles, security. Only there are not many tourists. The bulk of tourists, like the bulk of the bambu, are at the Dragon Bridge. This bridge is also not bad, it is 500 years old and it is very beautiful, only the abundance of people erases the charm, and we came here just for it)
The Yulong River is named after the same dragon as the bridge. I think so) Yulong in my head means "Meet the dragon", whoever disagrees, write, we will discuss)
The river is shallow but full of rapids. We passed the first threshold with squeals and sobs, but don't be afraid, all rapids are small. Although, who needs spoilers? ) Be afraid, be afraid, it's fun!
We pass the rapids, meet with the Golden Dragon, for some time other bambu are bambling next to us, but there are not many of them.
Then the river spreads wider, the fog falls lower, the neighboring bamboos burst forward, disappear from view. We are alone among these crazy pictures. Shanshui.
Bamboo slowly glides down the river. It's overcast, it's raining a little, but it's good, the world becomes kind of hushed, blurry and a little mystical. A soft blanket of fog wraps us up from the evil Asian sun and it does not bake in the head, does not blind the eyes and does not appeal to thirst. We are remarkably calm. We are in a perfect world. Butterflies fly, circling in a mediative dance, bamboo leans over a lazy river and is reflected in its waters, surrounded by blurry outlines of mountains. Birds are chirping, the rain is softly rustling, our bambi player is whistling a gentle melody and the rhythmic splash of the pole combines all the sounds of the river into a harmonious symphony.
This is the beautiful China that I love!
The surrounding landscapes are not always to blame for our delights or disappointments. It is said that the scenery of the Li River is far superior in beauty to that of the Yulong River. I don't know, my eyes saw unearthly beauty right here. The eyes are only a translator, they transmit a picture, but not an image. And something more complex inside me enjoyed the harmony of all the sensations - smells, sounds, and the hypnotic swaying of the bambu - everything that created the ideality of this place.
Are you afraid that you will fall asleep in such perfection? Yes, where is it! Periodic jumping on the rapids will bring you to your senses.
And maybe some gift will open for you, like my Nadia, for example)
At some point, the bambi player unobtrusively landed on the shore, where a small local entrepreneur, trading almost from the threshold of his own house, gave him a bottle of water for loyalty. They didn’t offer us anything, they pretended that we didn’t moor here to buy something, but just like that. Of course, we were thirsty and we crave cola. The guy rushed like a wild boar into the house, and Nadya suddenly shouted after him:
- Liange, Liange (Two jars)
- Nadia, you speak Chinese!
- Who will you hang out with)
The walk lasts more than an hour, but, anyway, I would like it to be longer, when it was time to leave the bamba, we loaded up. And immediately found themselves in the thick of things.
Here are handsome men loading the arrived bamba onto a truck. They will be taken to the beginning of the rafting. Otherwise how, by the rapids?
But a string of brand new scooters are waiting for their temporary owner to take a walk with him to the city. No rights are needed. Skills for you. We abstained)
There was also a mini market with goodies. There is fried local fish. I want, I want, and no arguments that anything can live in it, and fish quickly deteriorate in such heat, do not convince me. The fish turned out to be completely dry, heavily fried, so that what could be in it could not multiply, but it was quite tasty.
And by the way, I probably never ate a tasteless fish)
There is a modern bridge nearby, we sit on it for a long time, so the rain stopped in time. Here is a good overview. Space. And pastel, yes) Shanshui.
Beautiful! My China is beautiful!!
I don’t know how many kilometers to Yangshuo, in my Talmud it is written: walk towards Yangshuo to the nearest taxi rank. There are taxis right here, and this is probably the nearest station, but we fearlessly walk into the city on a road that takes us away from the river, and then we go back to the river.
Here we find a pier, and a bamba, and a taxi, but there are no people at all. There are barkers, but they are sluggish, not persistent at all.
We approach the river, take off our shoes, sit down on the steps. I just want to sit and watch. There is less space here, but pastel is present. We rest, next to a man in uniform washes dishes right in the river. He feeds the fish at the same time.
Then we try to walk again, but the electric car driver catches with a sixth sense that we wanted to ride on such a or just saw how happy I was when we met him, an hour earlier, on the road and runs to us with an offer, which we cannot refuse.
For 30 yuan he takes us to the city. He clarifies where exactly we were chunal and, having heard my signature gongongqichezhangbei, nods confidently. Probably, it was possible to negotiate right away to the hotel, but it’s good that we didn’t guess, otherwise we would probably lie in the room.
And so, we took a city bus to the bridge at the very beginning of Zapadnaya Street and immediately realized why they wrote to me that there was no need to cross the road) We were at another stop in the morning, on another street)
Now, they say, the northern bus station is closed, so no one will need the exact location of these stops.
This is where Nadia and I split up. She urgently needed to go to the store, and I needed to go to the mountain in the city park. There is no heat, I am cheerful and cheerful, why not)
I already spoke about the park, it looks sadder than some Vinnitsa back streets, but it has its own charm, as well as the aforementioned back streets in Vinnitsa) The local people rest there, it is very interesting to watch this. But the most important thing in this park is the mountain. Meps mi has a path so as not to get lost. The ascent is easy, short and pleasant.
Of course it was hard for me. Of course I'm tired. Of course, this is with legs and to the very top, I can hardly get to the third floor, but here there are nine or ten or it seemed to me. But I'm glad I went. This beauty is a must see. At least once.
The view is familiar, it is broadcast in all reports, but open space! The space is indescribable.
I'm proud that I went. I sit for a long time in the gazebo, in the middle of the ascent. I love the views, I love the colors. I am happy with my Chinese mini fan. I love moments like this – traveling alone. But not for long)
We are going to have lunch in a new place, there was delicious soup, one of the best in China. The best one was in Zhangjiajie, and this one is in second place. But unlike the first one, I can describe exactly where this soup can be eaten)
There is a department store in the center of Yangshuo. There is a strange place there - a waterfall. Water flows along the wall, and this wall is a level lower, as it were, minus one floor. Surely no one will pass by him. If we face this waterfall, but not on the minus first floor, but on the usual one, then we need to go right, all the way and turn right again. And there immediately, to our left, an inconspicuous door. Inside, there is an open-type kitchen and the chef prepares noodles.
They make soup with this noodle. Everything I like - noodles, broth, greens. And some spicy seasoning. The cook himself came out to us and insistently offered to add this seasoning to the soup. And it became very tasty! )
Here it is, China, which I love. Soup, noodles, seasoning, cook. I regret that I did not pay enough attention to the culinary side of China. Maybe not as bad as I thought. Will have to go back to China again and taste it)
And now our journey ends and the road home begins. The night bus will take us to Guangzhou, where we are going to have a good bath. Emotions are emotions, and the body also needs to be pampered.
I forgot to tell you - on the day we bought the tickets, we canceled our hotel reservation in Xingping. But they were late. Free cancellation was possible a day earlier. And now it was necessary to pay for the night of accommodation in the form of a fine. This upset me. First of all, I reproached myself for not really paying attention to such an important thing.
Important! The date of the free cancellation deadline for a hotel where you still don't know if you will stay overnight should be entered in a reminder on your phone.
The amount is not critical, but Nadia is too scrupulous in such matters, she didn’t eat broth, she didn’t live in a hotel, but she pays money and doesn’t accept objections but the feeling of guilt forced me to go for a little trick. It all started when Booking asked if we had a good reason. I regarded the reason as very respectful and, for luck, wrote to the hotel that it was not my fault for the untimely cancellation, this was the situation with train tickets (which, in general, was the purest truth). There are no tickets and we are forced to leave by night bus instead of checking into your wonderful hotel, which we have long dreamed of, but apparently not fate. And she dropped a tear on the leaf.
The answer came just before we left. Do not grieve, - the wonderful hotel from Xingping writes to us, - we are no less upset by the current situation and consider it fair to share your sadness financially. Pay half and we are even.
Life hack practically. Use)
The bus leaves Yangshuo at 9pm. You need to come to the travel agency at 20:30. At 8:30 a. m. , the Chinese speak Syawu. You need to be careful with this, as with English rm/am.
Language indentation:
From 0 to 11 o'clock it is shanwu (first half of the day), corresponds to am, from 12 to 23 - syavu (second half of the day), corresponds to rm. Noon will be zhongwu, midnight - vuye, they are not used in indicating the time, but shanwu and syavu are used constantly. I memorized it like this: Shang is up, that is, above noon, before noon, and Xia is down, below noon, after noon. The horizontal line symbolized noon for me) This is not entirely true, but it is remembered perfectly. Since it is impossible to write hieroglyphs here, I came up with such a picture. Now you will forever remember how to say top and bottom in Chinese)
And here it is important to understand that this is not a night / day, as we are used to, and to be careful. 1shangwu, it's one o'clock in the morning, like 1am)
It is very easy to remember how to ask what time is it in Chinese: Sencai ci dian?
Sentsai translated into Russian will be Now. Very convenient)
We arrive at the travel agency a little early. It turned out to be very difficult to pull suitcases along the pavement. The pebbles are uneven, the suitcases are heavy. There is a wonderful Japanese consumer goods store Miniso on West Street, we went there every day, two or three times a day, it made our suitcases much heavier in Yangshuo)
It is on these sharp pebbles that my terrible China begins, this is the hatched sprout that will give more flowers, and then berries.
We sit for a long time, then they take us in a minivan and for a long, very long, very, very long time, we stand right on the road, waiting for the bus. It is passing and a little delayed on the way. At the same time, our accompanying minivan closed, and with a look of "we are late for the bus" stands next to us. Heat. Time drags on very slowly, minutes literally stuck to the dial, in my tired body one desire pulsates - to lie down. And there is no bus and no.
When it finally arrives, we squeal and hoot and load and select the shelves. There are many free places. There is even one on the lower level. But the lower ones practically lie on the floor, and I read somewhere that people can be put right into the aisle at night, the prospect of waking up next to an aborigine did not inspire me. We chose the upper shelves.
I didn't tell you? We went to Guangzhou not by a simple bus, but by a gold slipping bus. When entering it, you need to take off your shoes, put them in a plastic bag that the driver gives out, and take them with you. The shelves are arranged in three rows and two tiers. I didn't take pictures, everyone was already asleep in our bus, I found an illustration on the Internet
Each chair comes with a pillow and a blanket. But no bedding. I spread out my stoles and inflate my pillow. There is nowhere to put things. A small shelf at the feet will not fit even a small backpack. We take seats near the windows, put our backpacks in the middle seat and quickly pack, trying not to make noise. The interior is warm, but not hot. I wear a mask and earplugs. Sleep-sleep-sleep. . .
I dreamed about sleepbus for a long time, it seemed to me so romanticcomfortable to lie on a shelf in the bus and sleep all night, like on a train. If someone thinks the same, but has not tried it yet, I will disappoint you. The train is the greatest invention of mankind, and the Chinese night bus is a terrible, terrible, torture instrument, such a special mockery for fat laowai. In a nutshell, it will be difficult to convey all my pain, but you turn on your imagination. First imagine the parameters of the average Chinese. Weight, height, foot size and waist circumference. And imagine me, 168 cm tall, shoe size 40. I’m even afraid to name the waist size, Chinese women rarely have such breast size. Now imagine this shelf for slender bodies, no legroom. I don’t know, maybe if I knew how to sleep in Turkish, or had Chinese legs, then the rest could be experienced. But with my legs there was nothing to think about convenience. For the legs, the Chinese came up with a box that tapers at an angle of about 30 degrees, where the feet have nowhere to go. Make an experiment - measure 60 cm (shelf width) and 10-15 cm (this is the height of the box for legs in a narrow place, in a wide one - about 30 cm), somehow limit such a space and hold your legs there. And imagine that you have to lie like that all night. In addition, I constantly moved into this box, because there is also a slope from the side of my head, there are someone’s legs, respectively, I’m lying on their box. The shelf itself is terribly narrow (maybe I even flattered her when I wrote about 60 cm), the iron limiter bites into the side, and on the other hand the window sill crushes. Very cramped and uncomfortable, nowhere to put your arms, legs and all of yourself. Almost until morning, I tried to contrive and arrange my body so that it does not hurt.
We stopped once on the way, at a gas station, the toilet is dirty, there is nowhere to smoke. Terrible, terrible this China! Parallel reality.
The night was endless. And it would have lasted even longer, if suddenly, at the beginning of the fourth morning, we were not literally pushed out of the bus.
-Guangzhou, come! Guangzhou, get out, run.
Turns out I fell asleep. I emerge from a heavy sleep, trying to figure out what they want from me, collecting my rags, blowing off the pillow, stuffing earplugs and a mask into the pocket of my backpack. I jump to the floor, remember that I forgot my shoes, I climb back, looking, I can’t find it. All this time the driver does not stop talking for a minute.
- Guangzhou, Guangzhou! Come out! Tsygel, tsygel, aylyulu. - in general, it whips up panic.
Nadya is already outside, but I'm still fiddling with socks and flip-flops, and when I finally go out, I finally find my suitcase, sleepy Nadya, and two vociferous bombers.
-Chunali? Chunali? Chunali?
Horror movie, in general, you understand me? I have a hard time accepting reality, looking around, brushing off the bombs like annoying flies, and slowly goofing waking up.
We are under a bridge on some deserted road, there are no cars or buildings around. From living people - we and two loud drivers of two taxis. And darkness. It's not yet half past four on the clock. This is what we got!
- Chunali? Chunali? Chunali? - Bombillas are constantly pressing.
- Don isya. I finally remember Chinese words. (Wait a minute). I find my itinerary in my backpack, which is quite difficult, considering how much I just crammed things into it on the bus. Showing the address to the driver.
- 100 yuan.
- Come on, what 100 yuan, come on for 50!
Naive Chukchi girl. In the middle of the night. In the ass of the world. On the outskirts of the city. With limited supply. Sit down silently and go for how much they are taking.
Drivers open their phones, enter an order into a local app like Uber, and 180 yuan pops up. I do not believe, I open my card. Oh, damn you! We are at the other end of the city, at a huge interchange, our bathhouse is at least half an hour away. We were going to go by train, so we chose a bathhouse near the southern railway station. Why did I decide that the bus arrives there too? ) And what a strange time! Our bus should arrive in Guangzhou at 6 am, or even a little later. We planned to be in the bathhouse by 7 and stay there until the next morning.
Nadia and I stand, look at the map, at the clock, at each other and understand that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's too early to get married late and far away, but we haven't booked any hotel.
The thought flickers, maybe first we should get to the central station, it is the closest, and wait there for the morning. But the prospect of sitting on the steps of the station, at night, in China, did not please absolutely. You can’t enter Chinese train stations without a ticket, and they can even close at night. We understand that it is too late to change the route now, so we agree to 100 yuan and load our suitcases into the trunk. To the bath, so to the bath. We'll see.
We sit in the back seat, suddenly the driver turns to us and writes on his phone - 150 yuan.
- Not! How can this be? We agreed for a hundred!
- I won't go for a hundred, only for a hundred and fifty.
Well kapets! So I've never bargained!
I'm angry, I'm trying to get out of the car, but Nadia is holding my hand.
-Tanya, it's just money, don't get mad, where are we going now? What's the alternative? We're in a slippery situation, and things are in the trunk. Let's go fast already.
Of course, Nadia is right. The situation is a dead end and there is no point in downloading the right. I grit my teeth and agree. I boil inside. It's just money, but what an ugly side China has turned towards us. Surely the bus driver told these unscrupulous grabbers that we were Tkhinbudon and dropped us off specially in such a deserted place. And he woke up so unexpectedly, and pumped - come on, come on - also on purpose, so that we were confused, scared, torn.
Contrasts add volume to life. Without them, it would be boring and colorless, right? ) During the day there was such a spiritual uplift and suddenly it’s night, we are in an unfamiliar city, in a foreign country, we don’t know the language, we don’t understand where exactly we are, we depend on a person we don’t even know what to expect. We are going through a beautiful, shining city. . . to a bathhouse.
Don't switch! )
