Easter Weekend back in Yangshuo

One night at dinner with some Chinglish teachers, I was explaining Easter and what it meant and how people celebrated it.  We've kept off the subject of religion here as it's a touchy subject, so I ended with "however, James and I don't go to church or anything on Easter, we just eat chocolate!"  A few days later I had to eat my words as I asked for Friday afternoon off to go to Yangshuo to celebrate a western festival "that means a lot to James and I".  So embarrassing.  However, we headed down to the train station to meet Geoff, Marg, Tim and Barbara.  We were 10 minutes early but when we got there we had to run to get on the train.  What had happened is our train had been delayed for 4 hours but we got on the train that should have been there at 8:30am (this was at 12:30pm).  It was the most packed train I've ever seen.  Our tickets entitled us to seats but there were none to be found.  We ended up in the aisle, slowly moving down to the end of the carriage.  James got stuck halfway up the aisle due to his big pack and had to stay there, next to a box of live chickens, for 3 hours.  I managed to find a chair I could lean on, and I shared it with Barbara but as we moved for the trolley coming through, we lost our lean!  Tim also lost his lean (against the toilet wall) to a really weird looking guy.  Eventually, Marg was offered a seat by a nice young boy and so was Barbara.  I shared a seat with another guy who decided since I was sharing seats, I should also share their food, so I was quite happy.

We arrived in Guilin 3 hours later and to my excitement, there were a couple of white people walking around.  It was great not to be the only foreigners in the city.  Some hawkers came over and tried to get us on their dodgy minibuses but Geoff knew what to do so he led us to the nice big, comfy air-conditioned express to Yangshuo.  Betts (the lady who trains us teachers) greeted us at Bucklands School (where we stayed as they have cheap, 3 star style accommodation) and we headed out to dinner with her and her husband Laurie.  Was a beautiful restaurant on the river and due to not eating any lunch and the beer being stronger than our usual, we got quite jolly quickly, especially Marg, who entertained us with songs from the 50's, 60's and 70's.  Quite a compilation.  We headed to the Buffalo Bar (owned by an Aussie) and had the tastiest shots ever, Cheesecakes.  Finished up at Karst with beers and hot chocolates laced with Chinese brandy.  And lots more songs from Marg, I wish I had the video camera there.

Next day was spent shopping, shopping and more shopping.  As the others continued, James and I decided to pretend we were at Knoppies and sat at the Island Cafe and drank beers all afternoon.  We had visitors from time to time, people trying to sell us stuff (now we own a Buddha with a really fat head - we've named him Beijing Barry) and people just coming to practise their English.  We managed to see our Irish friends walking down so they joined us. 

We headed out to dinner that night at China Cafe with Owen Buckland, Betts, Laurie, and Professor Zhong and his wife.  The Professor is the man in charge of what all of China's schools get taught and the textbooks they use, so pretty important man.  Unfortunately I wasn't aware of this and was playing with the video camera making Tim say caulk (which he pronounces 'cock') and laughing hysterically (I blame the beers).  But the Professor was lovely and we all had a great time then headed to a performance on the river which has the Karst mountain range lit up in the background as it's backdrop.  Absolutely amazing stuff.  The director of the performance is the director of the movie Hero.  The movie is really colourful and this performance totally topped it!  Afterwards James and I headed back to the Buffalo Bar to meet the Irish girls who were tanked.  Great fun from there watching some boys rev them up (Boys are better than girls stuff) and then a midnight snack at Lulu's Cafe.  Lulu (also owns the Island Cafe) was great and kept the bar open for us as we continued drinking and eating spam club sandwiches her chef made us.  Joanne disappeared twice and the 2nd time we lost her for good.  We waited at the bar, but after an hour she didn't return so we went back to Bucklands where she was sitting outside too drunk to use the key to open the door!  hee hee 

After 3 hours sleep, got up at 7:30am to have breakfast with everyone.  Needless to say, the Irish girls didn't make it, and neither did James!  Had the worst service and weirdest breakfast at a place pretending to be a coffee shop.  Tim ordered fruit and yoghurt and they brought a smoothie out.  Betts ordered Columbian coffee and didn't get it until after Tim's 2nd coffee, and it wasn't Columbian.  I ordered toast, and got mine last (because obviously it takes an hour to make toast) but I got to eat the 3 porridges they brought out by mistake while I waited.  At this time, Marg and Tim invented a word called 'criticizzle' which means to simultaneously criticize and complain.  Which is what were all doing at breakfast.

We went shopping again and then Tim got his hair washed and cut, Barbara got hers cut and I had her wash.  When they wash your hair they rub the shampoo in for about half an hour making shampoo mohawks and pompadours out of your hair.  It would've been great except for the fact they have really long nails and use them to scratch your scalp.  I'm sure this is a Chinese torture, because having shampoo rubbed into the gouges he was making in my scalp was so painful!  Eventually I just had to ask him to stop as I gripped the arms of my chair with white knuckles.  Then Tim, Barbara and I headed to a shop which wholesales western ingredients to restaurants and desperate foreigners like us.  We left with 5 kilos of spaghetti, cans of tomato paste, parmesan, herbs, butter and lime cordial.  Said our goodbyes and then headed back on the bus to Guilin.

The train back was much less packed and we managed to get 6 seats together, filling our tummies with crackers, chocolate and fruit (tiny little mangoes and bananas).  On the way back we discussed the meaning of criticizzle and asked James to patent it.  But he tricked us!  He wrote: James McCulloch is to be granted all monetary benefits derived from this word.  Then he got us to sign it, but we didn't read the fine print, so that's a bummer!  Then we decided that all the countries should get new national anthems because the current ones are boring. We decided it's be much nicer at the Beijing Olympics if when Ian Thorpe is standing on the 1st block for the Australians to sing 'The Vegemite Song'.  America could have Hawaii 5-O as theirs and some others were: Israel - Jesus Christ Superstar, Greece - Grease Lightning, Iraq - Staying Alive, Canada - The Lumberjack Song, Jamaica - Legalise It, etc.  This amused us all the way back to Yongzhou, where we were mauled by the other people on the train wanting our seats, even though the rest of the train was pretty empty.  And that ended our Easter Weekend (a severe lack of chocolate in this story, isn't there?).