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Warning: This post may contain foul language, adult situations, and 18-plus rated humor. If you want to continue to believe that Kaitlin is a sweet, innocent, naive little thing then please skip this blog post. Or, read it, but don't judge me too harshly. I'm in a wee bit of pain right now and probably overexaggerating.
My crotch hurts.
Amy and I have had a very relaxing couple of days. Yesterday was a cooking lesson and it was awesome! I have every intention of cooking for my mom when I get back cause I think she'd really appreciate the dishes we learned. They're awesomely yummy. One was the local specialty, Beer Fish. I also ate water buffalo for the first time. Very tough, but also good.
After some internet time and shopping, Amy and I then headed to see the Cormorant Fishing Show. Dad, you would have loved this. They fish with birds they've trained and they tie a loose noose around the bird's neck so they can't swallow their catches. Then they kinda get the bird to spit the fish out. Really cool stuff. Amy took pictures of me holding one of the birds after the show and whenever she gets caught up on her pictures (haha!) they'll be up. However I'll probably be home and have shown them to you before that.
We bought a lot of candy and giggled like idiots on a sugar high as we watched Chinese tv until we fell asleep. We actually got to sleep in today. YAY! After breakfast at a cafe owned by a Canadian and his Chinese wife (REALLY good french toast AND they had syrup. Aunt Jemima, but still!) we rented a couple mountain bikes from our hostel and set out on what was supposed to be an easy bike trip.
It wasn't.
I feel very fortunate that Sab taught me a little bit about biking; shifting gears and the like. Today I needed everything I knew. We somehow made a wrong turn at a non-traffic circle thingy and ended up in the middle of nowhere. We took out our map and some helpful town people seemed to understand we wanted to go to the Banyan tree. They nodded and sent a child on a bike to lead us.
f***ing people. Honest to god. When we say BANYAN TREE and point to it on the map (where it has the name in chinese I might add) what part of that sounds like "Hello, I want you to take me to the bamboo rafts that will take me down the river for 5 hours before letting me off kinda near the banyan tree, but not really. Also, please charge me 300 yuan for this."
This happened twice. We said no thanks to the first bamboo raft people which seemed to really piss one of them off. Then we headed back the way we came, hoping to head down a bike path to a village Amy wanted to see. We kept running into some people from France who wanted to go the same way so we joined forces. Kaitlin was then led down a series of mountainy roads, twists, turns, giant rocks, and areas so narrow she fell off her bike.
I fell off my bike FIVE f***ING TIMES before I got really pissed off. I'm not an idiot, I know how to ride. But since everyone just breezed on over the areas I kept falling on I thought maybe I could make it. No. At this point I walked my bike a good long time.
We stopped for pics and the frenchies left us. Fortunately, we happened upon a lady guiding some asian tourists on a tandem bike who also were going there. Great! We'll just follow them. They were smart and WALKED the bikes in hard spots. My dignity thanks that lady.
Where do we end up? BACK UP THE RIVER at another spot to take the stupid f***ing rafts. We said No again and were able to figure out how to get where we needed. We'd given up on the tree at this point and were going to be satisfied to just get back to Yangshou. A lady on a motorbike who spoke perfect English (I think she was English actually) told us to go straight to the main road and turn left, can't miss it.
She was right. But at this point, my back and shoulders hurt from the awkward way I had to lean on the bike (horrible handlebars), I had blisters between my thumbs and index fingers, and my ass was killing me.
When we hit the main road there was a cafe and we couldn't resist a quick stop for ice cream and cold water. We are still both way dehydrated. The stop was nice, and we realized we were where we SHOULD have been 3 hours ago for the Banyan tree. So we headed that way after our break. This, is where it began to get really painful.
That short break allowed the muscles between our legs enough time to swell from the pain they were in. Which meant sitting was now unbelievably painful. But it was two minutes to the tree and we sucked it up.
The tree was cool and we got to ride a water buffalo for a bit, which made it all worthwhile. But with how tired we had both become, it lost some of the magic :P
The ride back was the hard part. More time for swelling and chafing and we still had to ride a half hour back to town. Amy and I both winced and cried as we sat on the seats and pushed off.
"You know," I said as I turned to Amy, "If I was in this much pain as a result of sex, at least I could be proud about it."
"Yeah. Cause then you would have had some REALLY good sex." She agreed.
We then tried to focus on talking about sex instead of the pain we were in. Eventually, we could manage to sit but that was because all the endorphins had kicked in to help us out and we were both sighing happily, ever so glad to feel nothing below the waist.
We made it back, started some laundry since our clothing was drenched in sweat (it was like 34 degrees), and cursed the sky as it began to rain NOW and not while riding when we needed it. So here we sit, trying not to focus on the pain and instead thinking about delicious food at the Yak Cafe we will soon be eating.
Seriously though... OWWWWWW
We leave for Shenzhen (the gateway to Hong Kong) tomorrow. We have to take an afternoon bus back to Guilin and then a sleeper bus from there the rest of the way. Hopefully Hong Kong won't be too complicated to get into and find lodging at. For the moment, we have nothing.
There may not be any further updates from me at this point because, we'll, I'm home on the 9th. But you never know... I didn't think I'd have even this much time to update! Lucky you, getting to read about my adventures :D I have loved China but I will be glad to see everyone again! Hopefully my pelvis will have recovered.
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