ok back from the trip! really really enjoyed it. we stayed in yangshuo for 3 days, 2 nights. caught the night bus from Shenzhen to Yangshuo. we were really lost and the ticket counter for buses just told us something about "canceled" buses to yangshuo. and these hawkers kept following us repeating "guilin? guilin? yangshuo?" this guy in a suit brought us to a small travel agency and we got tickets for like 230 RMB but we were really scared it was a scam. Everything turned out okay though and I even met some people from a school near mine in the US (and they spoke mandarin!).
bus was pretty comfortable - could have used more room but i'm short so it doesn't matter.
our hostel was super far from the town center, maybe like a 15 minute walk. but it was nice and the receptionist was super helpful.
day 1: walked around town in the morning since we arrived super early. "bamboo" raft on the Li River from Xingping to some place further north I don't know the name of and back south to a small fishing village. The old folks there were a bit nasty even though we didn't do anything remotely offensive. checked out west street at night which was really nice. I gave my tripod to my friend to hold because I had too much stuff. when we got off the bus she left it by accident. so effing pissed even though it's half my fault for giving it to her and not making sure she had it getting off the bus in the first place. we went back to the bus station with notes and memos in chinese for the next 2 days and no one was able to help us
day 2: longji rice terraces - this took up pretty much the whole day and even though it's not exactly prime time for the terraces it was still really nice. west street and other stuff again at night
day 3: cycled from yangshuo south along the yulong river. went to moon hill then to the mudbath and hot springs. The mud bath was freezing and the hot spring was pretty lame, but I guess it's just not the season for it. met some other kids the day before from the school I'm on exchange at and they loved it, so that's why we tried it out -_- anyway, we cycled back to yangshuo after that. we tried to find this hill on pantao road with a super nice view that some friends told us about but we couldn't find it. ended up just going up that small hill with the small temple on top to watch the sunset. really amazing
we didn't even go to guilin but we passed through it on the way back from longji terraces and judging by what I saw, I'm happy I stayed in Yangshuo...
the night bus back was good. except this british couple who i'm guessing were new to the night bus thing got the driver to kick me and this local chinese girl off the top bunks so that they could be "next to each other." seriously? i didn't mind being on the bottom level except that all my stuff was already settled in. it's a 10-hour night bus ride. i'm honestly confused why the hell they needed to be next to each other