With the Expo looming we escaped to Yangshuo [阳朔], close to Guilin [桂林] for a little climbing trip. Yangshuo is well known firstly for its amazing karst scenery as well as, more recently, rock climbing.
West Street - with all its tourist stalls, the river running behind West Street
We stayed at the Sihai Hotel [四海饭店] which is half-way along West Street [西街], which worked as a hub for tourist activity. The pedestrianised street was lined with stalls selling all kinds of trash you buy on holiday and things marauding as souvenirs. The street which ran behind seemed to conatin all the restaurants as well as one or two climbing shops (blackrock climbing - where we bought our guide book 'Yangshuo Rock Climbs' by Paul Collis)
The front of the SiHai Hotel [四海饭店] + obligitory trinket stall outside
West street at night - where nightclubs compete to see who can play their music the loudest and try to entice people in by posting young chinese standing in the doorway armed with whistles and clappers.
The street which runs behind West Street with all the restaurants - the North end of the street has really good and cheap claypot and dumpling restaurants, most of which serve the famous Yangshuo beer fish [啤酒鱼], the rest of the street tends to be aimed at tourists with western food at much higher prices.
As dusk falls on the town some of the little trinket stalls pack away, the neon lights are turned on and the music from the nightclubs/bars is played ridiculously loud (the Chinese appear to have a thing for excessive volume, which kinda detracts from the atmosphere-creating aspect of playing music at a venue, the louder the better apparently).
Despite the Sihai hotel having its own ear-drum-blasting nightclub, when I had booked (with some sketchy chinese over the phone and then with even more sketchy chinese in emails later) the hotel assured me that we would have 'good rooms' - I'm not sure why I would want a bad one, but nevermind. It turned out that 'good rooms' are those isolated from the nightclub noise (ie. not in the building directly connected to it) the block that Rei's twin room was in was much newer and as far from the noise as possible. Which was great, because we could sleep at night, unlike the people in the block directly above the hotel.
Anyhoo, in hindsight it's best to not stay on West Street unless you plan on bursting your eardrums and going clubbing (nightclubbing not seal-clubbing).
Breakfast at Kellys Place
Geese in a BAG!
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