sorry no pictures - part 1.

Sorry for the pause in blogging, we’ve had an action packed week. I am writing this post from a capsule hotel in Japan, free wifi, and no vpn necessary!

 

Last Thurs Cacia and I had our last day on campus. I gave my last lecture and Cacia finished her robot, gave a final presentation and said goodbye to Prof Liu and his grad students.

 

Cacia and I wanted to take advantage of our last two free days in China and booked a flight to the south west region I had visited with Greg and Leone 6 years ago, Yangshuo. Our flight was at 6:50 am, so we had to leave our apartment at 3:30 am. We were worried that we wouldn’t be able to find a taxi at that time, but we didn’t have to wait too long before a free taxi drove by the campus gate where we were waiting. Without traffic the drive to the airport was a lot faster than during regular hours, but it is still a long way, and took maybe 45 minutes to get to the airport. It’s always a bit of a panic getting out of the deep back seats of the taxis, paying, and grabbing all your stuff. I paid the driver, grabbed my things, and scooted from the far side of the back seat to the curb to get out. When I stood up outside the taxi, I checked my pockets (my continual habit to check for my phone, keys, wallet, passport) and my phone pocket was empty! The taxi was just starting to drive off, I waved from behind and ran after him, but he was too fast, didn’t look in rear view mirror, and my phone was gone. L Ugh. It was a bad feeling, but there are worse things to loose. I have changed all my passwords, cleared the old phone, and ordered a new one (luckily blackberries aren’t popular, and you can get them at good prices!). So I should be back online with my phone after the trip. But for now, its old school, laptop email communication for me. And no new photos from me! (the photos on the phone were all saved to the “cloud”, so to answer Leone’s first question, “no photos were harmed in the making of this blog”).

 

We had just two days in Yangshuo (one night), so we took advantage of every minute. The region has many caves, so we visited one of the caves, within biking distance from our hotel. It was nice and cool inside, and the forms inside were amazing. We were the only English speaking tourists, so we had our own private guide. And has been Cacia’s experience this whole trip, we somehow managed to find a time between large Chinese tour groups, so the cave was relatively quiet. The cave is also known for its hot spring and mud bath, but we chose to only put our hands into the pools, and not take a full mud bath. After the cave tour, we wanted to find something to eat, and not feeling adventurous enough to try street food, we continued our bike ride into town, and found a nice little restaurant with air conditioning, a large pitcher of mango juice (my favourite), and ate a great meal (linner, late lunch early dinner). Again, maybe because of the odd time for a meal, we were almost alone in the restaurant, and enjoyed the rest and break from the heat and humidity. After linner we explored the small shops downtown, and then biked back to our hotel for a shower, and a little rest. We had booked tickets online for the famous evening light, and a driver was picking us up at the hotel with our tickets. When you can’t speak the language, and things always seem a little chaotic in China, I always have this doubt that things will actually work out as planned … but somehow they always do, as this evening did too. We saw a great show, and even managed to stay awake, after a very long day!

 

For our second day we had decided to join a day tour of the region. Unfortunately, our hotel said our planned tour wasn’t going to work out, but asked if we would be alright with a driver instead. So, again, with Cacia’s luck we are on our own private tour, without Chinese tourists, following the same planned route we had planned to do originally. The day started with a beautiful drive into the hills, and a tea plantation at the top of one of the mountains. The air was beautiful, fresh and cool (compared to the hot humid city). And the views were awesome! We also got a hat and basket and picked our own tea leaves!! Again, there were no other tourists around, it was nice and quiet, but we had know idea how to pick tea, and no one giving us instructions. So we peaked over the shoulder of one of the professional tea pickers to see which leaves to pick. We picked tea leaves, took photos, and enjoyed the views. But the accumulation of tea leaves in our baskets was not very impressive. We were given our leaves to keep, and then had a tasting of local teas: green, flower and black tea.

 

More later…