Paying a visit to the very lame town of Yangshuo, China

Posted on September 16, 2016

After leaving the Li River that day (Check out my post Cruising down the Li River in Guilin, China) we hopped into a three wheeled motorbike and headed to a place called Yangdi, a small village on the Li River where we could catch a ride to the town of Yangshuo, one of China’s most renowned towns for backpackers and travelers alike.

The three wheeled motorbikes just amaze me. It’s such a ghetto piece of garbage, but somehow it makes do. They modify an absurdly low quality motorbike by welding a carriage on it, and somehow it actually works. Although every time the old man shifted into the next gear, you could hear the pleasant sound of metal grinding.

Not to mention, the carriage wasn’t exactly well balanced. The thing was slamming up and down the entire ride. Once we got to Yangdi though, we were quick to get off it.

Yangdi was a pleasant little locale, though we didn’t stay very long but the time we waited for the bus. In fact, we didn’t stay more than 5 minutes because the bus was already there. It was beautiful though to see the crazy looking Guilin mountains in the background everywhere.

After a long bus ride that was the better portion of 2 hours long, we arrived in the town of Yangshuo. We were tired as hell from traveling all day, so we promptly found our hostel. We stayed at the Yangshuo Culture House, which we found to be less than appealing. I got a few cans of Liquan River Beer (Because that’s the only damn beer you can find in this particular region of China) and we set out to walk towards New West Street when the sun went down. New West Street is the most popular street with food and bars in Yangshuo.

Yangshuo was the exact opposite of what I had pictured. The town pretty much sucks. There’s nothing to do, no good beer, and yeah, the place is just gay pretty much. We decided to take a good walk around New West Street to at least give it a chance.

The only thing I actually liked about Yangshuo was the opposite of what you’d think – not the beautiful scenery or the cultural Chinese aspects of the town – it was the foreigner street. Yes, I found Yangshuo to be hot as hell, dusty as shit, and quite boring. The foreigner street was almost as bad, but it brought some western comforts that we are familiar with, like incredibly overpriced “imported” beer that was probably made in China.

Other than that, we had planned to stay in Yangshuo for a few days – but strike that. We left the very nexr day. Fuck Yangshuo. However, please do continue following my travels! Check out my YouTube channel and don’t forget to check out this episode’s video above!