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Firstly apologies for the tardiness of this update! We haven't been travelling at all and days have been jam-packed!
Turns out sleep was not going to be a possibility as it dawned on us that we were in the worlds most uncomfortable seats, clearly designed to induce severe back pain. The journey could not have lasted longer. Josh reverted to curling up in a ball on the floor under the seats, which was a traumatizing disgusting experience. The seats seemed to actually lean in slightly let alone recline and were designed for small Chinese people who apparently have tiny asses because there just was not enough room for ours! Anyway, the journey eventually came to an end (thank god) and we arrived in Luizhou around 5am. Our next train wasn't until 9 so we decided to head out into town to get breakfast - obviously at KFC. Despite having absolutely no sleep, we were feeling relatively okay as we munched away on our mini burgers and took advantage of the free wifi from the hotel next door. After a good few hours spent in KFC, we headed back to the train station to catch our train to Guilin.
Fortunately this was only a short train (around 4 hours) because we were surrounded by rural farmer type people who had a obsession with spitting on the floor around our feet and literally eye raping us. We tried to sleep as the tiredness from the previous journey kicked in so only caught some glimpses of the passing countryside, which was nonetheless pretty cool. Turns out our train didn't get in to Guilin train station - it actually took us to Guilin North which was then a 20 stop bus journey from the bus station. Effort. Having heard about our friends in Yangshou who got mugged at knife-point yesterday we were very wary of the locals who apparently get you to one side by offering taxis and tours then whip out a huge machete and tell you to empty your wallet. The bus ride actually went relatively quickly and there were plenty of tickets available for the 1435 bus (we actually bought our tickets in advance for once - yes, we're learning!) which gave us time for lunch before we got on. Lunch was AWESOME! We luckily stumbled across a small food court and pigged out on Chinese street food like rice and wraps. By this point however we were literally exhausted so when we got on the bus we were pretty much out for the entire hour and a half journey. When in Yanghsou we cockily strode off the bus and headed to our hostel. Only problem was we didn't know where this was! None of us actually thought this would be too much of an issue and we just made our way down West Street. Immediately we loved Yangshou. It looked like a "Disneyland" style stereotypical Chinese town, which although not authentic looked amazing. West Street is the main road in Yangshou and by day it is a heaving market style street lined with souvenir shops. By night, every bar and restaurant becomes a club with ridiculous light and sound systems. In total on this one road there were around 20 clubs and it was only about 1km long! The temperature here is a lot hotter than anywhere else we'd been and after walking down west street with or luggage, unsuccessful in spotting the hostel, we squatted on the side of the road and got the booking confirmation up from Josh's laptop. Thankfully, Monkey Janes (our hostel) was on an alley off West Street so we were there within 5 minutes.
The hostel looked SO FUN! Outside there were signs advertising the rooftop bar deals - beer pong all night every night being the most exciting feature (WE LOVE BEER PONG). Happy hour 6-9pm and Crazy hour 12am-2am also featured cheap shisha, beer and baijo buckets. The hostel itself is a famous location for backpackers and the logo is apparently well-known worldwide which is pretty cool so we stole a load of stickers from reception! The reviews of the hostel ranked it very highly in most aspects but exceedingly low in cleanliness and staff hospitality - incredibly accurate criticisms! There was a C grade health inspection certificate hidden away behind the desk with a sad face and the staff were complete t*** . Jane who owns the hostel is apparently an amazingly hilarious slut but she was away in Shanghai for business (she slept with one man for his hotel room, another man because she liked him, and two men for "business"….). The b****y receptionist showed us to our room, which was on the ground floor. Unfortunately we were not as lucky as our other hostels as our 4 bed dorm had another inhabitant. After inspecting his belongings we deduced that he was around a 20-year-old male either very overweight or just horrendously unstylish with his clothing choice. Turned out the be the latter- he was a complete David. We certainly would not be hanging out with him. The girls who were mugged, who are also at Cambridge (one studies Chinese with Sam and the other is her best friend from college), were in Yangshou for one night with us as we persuaded us to delay their train tickets by 24 hours to see us. We were planning on having a nap because we still had barely slept due to our 24 hour journey from door to door but ended up just chilling on our laptops and then heading up to the bar to wait for the girls. The view from the roof was absolutely incredible. Sunset over the shack-like rooftops with the surrounding Karst-limestone scenery was ridiculously breathtaking. After appreciating the view for 5 minutes we decided it was time to get drunk - something we had not done since Shanghai! Happy hour was fully taken advantage of and when the girls arrived we played many games of beer pong, earning us free Monkey Jane t-shirts, which are pretty sweet to say the least. Our night out was hilarious, everyone was on great form. One member of the group, we won't name names to save him from embarrassment, hasn't drank for a year because he's taken a gap yah and only went out twice to get with "34 year old supermodels" so the alcohol affected him a little more dramatically. Probably didn't help that the other two members of the group grabbed a chicken burger half way through our roof top pre whereas he hadn't eaten in almost 7 hours. He ended up vomming on the floor of a fast food restaurant at 3am…we will not be allowed back in there which is actually a shame because the chicken wraps were awesome! Anyway, as we said we don't want to mention names.
We arrived back to our hostel at around 3:30am, covered the unnamed child in hair gel while he was passed out (it genuinely still hasn't all come out 4 days later!) and went to bed.
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