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We were still soaking from our jump into the river when we were dropped off in Yangshuo. Yangshuo ass a really pretty town: completely surrounded by mountains, full of cobbled streets and winding alleys and free of the huge, ugly skyscrapers that Chinese cities are so fond of. It was extremely touristy though; all of those winding alleys were bursting with souvenir shops, bars and restaurants and there were more foreigners concentrated on the streets than I've seen anywhere since we arrived in China. We dumped our things at our hostel, Monkey Jane's, showered, and headed out to find somewhere to eat. Naomi and the boys were set on treating themselves to a Western meal at a faux-German restaurant, but Beth, Cat, Hannah and I continued on and ended up having a very cute little meal at a small Szechuan restaurant on the other side of the river.
When we went back to the hostel, we headed straight up to the bar which is the redeeming feature of an otherwise scruffy and average hostel. The bar was actually the only reason why we'd booked rooms at Monkey Jane's, because we'd heard stories about how brilliant it was from lots of random people we'd bumped into during our earlier travels. It had a fairly cheap happy hour, really fun staff and a beer pong table set up which was in use throughout the night. We also found Sam, my friend from Jiujiang, standing at the bar when we arrived! Unfortunately he was the bearer of bad news regarding my pet turtle Tao Tao. I'd arranged for a friend of a friend to adopt Tao Tao when Nicole and I left Jiujiang, but our last few days were such a rush that I'd no chance to go to the university to drop him off. Instead, I'd given Tao Tao to Sam, who looked after him for a few more days before passing him on to another friend, Pete, who lived by the university and would easily be able to drop Tao Tao off at his new home. Except - and we don't know how this happened - but in the one night that Pete had Tao Tao, he died. I'm apt to blame Pete because Tao Tao was a very resilient turtle, having survived student-induced abuse and multiple long weekends alone. RIP Tao Tao. On a happier note, a crazy old Chinese man turned up at the bar later with two pet snakes and a pot of home-brewed and unidentifiable alcohol in tow. He was absolutely hilarious and very easily persuaded into dancing stupidly with us... and letting us dance and play with his snakes... it was a really good night, although it turns out I am exactly as bad at beer pong as would be expected and lost all of the Chinese drinking games I played against the bar staff.
On Thursday we (well, most of us) were up in good time to hire bikes and cycle to a mud cave outside of town. I really enjoyed the cycle ride; the scenery all around us was really beautiful and it was fun cycling about in a huge convoy. The cave, when we reached it, was very, very Chinese. It would have been interesting in its own right, and the multi-coloured lights that had been added were pretty too, but the attempts to add interest by interpreting random rocks as various animals were ridiculous. My personal favourites were "Maternal cave", so named because the ceiling looked like it was covered in rock boobs, and "Rebirth hole", into which Naomi climbed to re-enact her own birth. Throughout the caves, we were all looking forward to the mud section, where you could jump into a pool of very runny mud and just splash about like an idiot. It shouldn't have been surprising, but when we finally reached and jumped into the mud pool it was kind of gross. The mud was slippy and gritty and slimy and took two showers to get rid of after we got out. The mud-water must have been really salty too, because we floated so much that when we tried to swim our legs went flailing over our heads and we ended up flipped over onto our faces. After our mud bath, we relaxed (read: nearly fell asleep in) the hot springs for half an hour. Then we girls cycled back to the hostel because Beth and I had a chore to do...
The Monkey Jane's bar gives out free "Monkey Jane" t-shirts to its guests if they complete one of a variety of tasks, for example winning three games of beer pong in a row, staying longer than 10 days, drinking 20 shots of snake wine... We'd all decided that we needed a Monkey Jane t-shirt, and Beth and I had decided that we would earn ours by carrying 10 crates each of beer up the five flights of stairs from the reception to the rooftop bar. In the end, we couldn't do this when we got back from our cycle because the beer hadn't been delivered yet. Instead we showered and napped, and began carrying all the beers up just as the others began to head up to the bar area, which meant they got to stroll past us laughing as we strained and sweated up the stairs. We did it easily enough, although we were very sweaty by the end of it and we were the first of our group to get a t-shirt. Success!
In order to take full advantage of the hostel bar's Happy Hour, we ate dinner at the hostel. We were meant to plan our travel from Yangshuo to Kunming the next morning whilst we ate, so it would all be arranged before we began drinking. Instead, we got distracted planning how we would team up in pairs to race to Kunming, and rather than actually making any sensible plans we just imagined a very violent, Hunger Games-esque fight to arrive first and started drinking. Everyone but me and Beth, who were smugly taking photos in our new t-shirts with the hostel staff, was now competing to earn their own. Some just bought heaps of alcohol in exchange for theirs, some people managed to win enough rounds of beer pong, others chugged from beer bongs, Cat bribed the bar maid with a 5Y tip... in the end all but Pete and Alex had a t-shirt, and Beth managed to get an extra one from playing beer pong. Before we knew it, it was nearly 6am and there were only five of us left, plus a guy called Carter we'd just met and the bar staff. It was beginning to get light and the hostel staff suggested we should go down to the river to watch the sunrise. We ran down into town, managed to find a mini bus who would drive us to a part of the river with a small beach and little to no current and that's how we ended up jumping in the Li river and swimming about as the sun came up, which is one of my favourite memories of China. (Don't worry, the river was shallow enough hear that we could stand up if we needed to.)
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Jim All night sessions at Monkey Jane's followed by a dawn dip in the river. What could possibly go wrong? Pleased to read that the water was sufficiently shallow. The mudbath sounds gross. Pity about Tao Tao.