Ron and Amy
Go To China

 

Day 7

Bus to Guilin / Bus to Chongqing
From Xingping we wanted to keep traveling north to Guilin. This proved to virtually impossible for us unless we wanted to hire a private taxi. For some reason, the buses only ran south, back to Yangshuo, where one could get on another bus back north to Guilin. I was stubborn though, I couldn't believe that with all the traffic coming in and out of town, that all these people were going south and none north. Guilin was a major city and Yangshuo was only a small town - my sense of logic would not leave it alone.
On the Bus
I was so stubborn in fact, that I made my own little hitchhiking sign on which I had fashioned the chinese characters for Guilin and I held up it to every passing motorist. Occasionally, someone would stop and I would run up and say, "Guilin?" To which they would all reply, "No Guilin, Yangshuo!" I even insisted that we hike out of town toward the main highway carrying all our baggage in search of a Guilin-bound bus. A mile or two later, trudging along the the side of the road, I could tell Amy's patience with me was starting to wane and I finally caved in to the notion that "you can't there from here."


Dirty socks on the sleeper bus
We flagged down the next tour bus we saw and returned to Yangshuo, where we immediately boarded a bus collecting passengers for Guilin. In a little over an hour, we were in Guilin. This city is also known for its karsts and caves, but we still wanted to see the Yangtze River and Shanghai, which involved at least 1500 miles of travel in our 7 remaining days. We decided to get another bus for Chongqing right away. This bus ride was listed as 17 hours. Considering our last bus trip was supposed to 9 hours and ending being 13 hours, we were worried we'd be cooped up on the bus for a solid 24 hours.
Scenes from Guilin
Once again, this bus didn't travel in a straight line but took a long curving route southwest through Liuzhou and then headed north, zigzagged up through Guiyang (for all you travel enthusiasts following along with your China maps). I tried to figure out a way that we could break up the trip into two 8 or 9 hour trips with a stop in between but it wasn't happening.I kept suggesting places to stop with a woman from the bus company but as near as I could understand with what few words we could exchange, the bus went through other cities but did not stop. So we were stuck with another long haul.
This trip had similar periods of smooth sailing and road construction delays (see my dirty socks in the accompanying photo), but somehow we managed to pull into Chonqing in only 15 hours instead of the projected 17. The most memorable point in the journey for me was waking up around dawn looking down a steep hill of mud full of ruts at least two feet deep. The whole bus was leaning to one side. The bus got stuck once and had to back up about a hundred feet in order to navigate the mud through a different set of deep ruts. A half an hour later, we passed a tour bus very similar to our own being towed by a large tow truck. It was similar except that all metal on one side of the bus had been mangled or torn off in what I could only guess was a horrific high-speed collision.
Next Page - Chongqing Home Page