Because of that, we made it to Yangshuo much earlier than planned. We checked into our hotel and spent a while walking up and down West Street. West Street is Yangshuo's tourist street, and one of the most fun tourist streets I've been to in China. There is just so much to see and do!
We stopped in all of the little shops (I finally bought myself a silk scarf) and were shocked by the large number of Western restaurants. Actually there were a lot of German restaurants as well - a whole street of them!
We were stopped by a few ladies who were trying to sell us river floating tours. It was something we were interested in, but when one of the ladies told us it was in walking distance, we decided we'd try to find it by ourselves first. So we walked down to the Li River and explored the edge of it a bit.
There wasn't much to see, and our path soon turned into stepping stones. Bailey tried it out and slipped into the water!
It was only ankle deep at that point, but his fall deterred us from going any further. We eventually decided to go to the official tourist center of West Street to inquire about the river rafting. And by then, it was too late in the day and there were no more rafting tours! We should have just stopped there in the first place and saved West Street for later in the day. But I guess we did save money. I've done the river rafting before and enjoyed it, so I feel bad that Bailey and my mom won't have a chance! There wasn't anything we could do about it at that point, so we grabbed some lunch (McDonald's for mom and Bailey, and fried dumplings for me!) and called it a rest day.
It was kind of nice to take it easy! Plus our hotel room had a bath so of course I had to use that (I can't remember the last time I was able to bathe!) I'm not very good at resting, though, so my mom and Bailey each took a turn going out with me to explore a little further.
On mine and Bailey's expedition, we ran into a whole bunch of other ILP teachers. The ones we were most excited to see were Mitch and Katey! We walked around a little bit with them and caught up with each other about our adventures. They showed us one of the best places to eat on the street, which also happened to say "this shop does not welcome Japanese". That was a little shocking! That place would not survive in the States. Of course they probably would have seen me as the American that I am, and would have served me, but neither Bailey and I wanted to support such a place, haha.
We stopped by a meat stick place where I got quail eggs on a stick, and went in to grab mom to join us for actual dinner.
Dinner was at the weirdest place! We sat down and a German guy brought us about five different menus. A pizza menu, a Thai menu, a German menu, a Western menu, etc. Apparently all of the surrounding restaurants were of the same restaurant so you can sit anywhere and order anything or something. It was super confusing. Also, there was a rat running around the shelves near the ceiling. The food didn't look that great (I'm really just into Chinese food these days) so I just ordered a cheesy baked potato, which was pretty good. I wasn't that hungry anyway, the dumplings from earlier were very filling!
We took a little bit more time after dinner to explore the streets. West Street really comes alive at night!
One thing that is really popular to sell are dresses! Dresses everywhere! I liked how the ladies standing in the middle of the street would wear the dresses they were selling, then we could see what they looked like on. This year's style consists of flutter sleeves and longer lengths (in 2014 the dresses were mostly short and sleeveless) so it was REALLY tempting to buy them all. But, Bailey and I have been doing some serious budgeting and I escaped with just some normal modern Chinese girl style pants and a more traditional looking red top which I actually think may be a dress.
We will sleep well tonight, as our mattresses are Western and our hotel is quiet even though it's right off West Street. Tomorrow is a day we have really been looking forward to!
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