Dispatch - Yang Shuo, China - 11/20/2008

After two exciting days of travel we have arrived in Yang Shuo. Since there are no direct flights to the mainland from Taiwan so we first had to fly into Hong Kong. In Hong Kong we had planned on tranferring to a ferry that would take us to another airport across the water in China where we could then fly up north to a town called Guilin. Instead, we missed the ferry transfer to collect our luggage and was then forced through Hong Kong customs - once through customs we would have to find another option to get out of the airport. We choose the airport express train that led to the Hong Kong subway. The subway is very modern but very busy and required 5 transfers which we negotiated with all our climbing gear. The other thousands of people were obviously commuters and were surprised by our amount of luggage. We then reached an above ground line that headed for the Chinese border. At the end of the line we worked our way through Chinese customs and were finally on the mainland. We then spent hours trying o find a bus or train bound for the Szenchen airport - even speaking Chinese and English it took alot of asking to work our way through the confusing transportation network in China. We finally embarked on a wild bus ride through the city and ended at a local airport serving domestic flights within China.

We had yet to aquire tickets to Guilin so we went directly to the airline counter and bought tickets with cash for a later flight. We took all our gear and walked to the small neighboring town and had beers and dinner. There was a school bus full of kids that all ran to the side of the bus to say "hello" to the westerner in town. In all my travels in Asia I had never had this much attention from local children - they were clearly excited to practice their English and wowed by a white guy sitting on the street-side. Szu-ting said she had never got so many looks, for even though she is Chinese we were clearly not locals. We had amazing hand pulled noodles for 3 yen (40 cents) a plate for dinner and returned to the airport. The flight was an hour and 500 km long - the train would have been 13 hours so it was money well spent. We were finished after that day and found a hotel with a massive marble and chandelier lobby - it was $18 USD a night. In the morning we found yet another bus to take us the hour here to Yang Shuo. We have been busy working to find long-term housing, get climbing info, and settle into this tourist town amongst the beautful karst towers this region is famous for. More adventures to come.