Email No. 6

-----Original Message-----
From: Motti Mor [mailto:motti_mor@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 1:14 PM
Subject: Trip to China (No.4) - a look back

Hi,

I know I didn't write for a long time but I just couldn't find the time to write a long e-mail. Every time I sat down to write something I had to go. (Can you imagine how many drafts I have saved????) I'll start from where I finished my last e-mail and break down this email in three parts because I don't want you to fall asleep in the middle. So here we go....

Chengdu-Guilin-Yang Shu
After flying from Chengdu to Guilin airport, we took a bus straight to the Guilin bus station in order to catch a 2-hour bus to Yang Shu. The area of Guilin is known by its amazing landscape of hills, rivers, and rice terraces.

When we arrived to Guilin, we saw a different city from the sparkling Chengdu. Guilin was smaller and as we searched for the bus, many non-Chinese look-alikes started to run after us to ask for many things we didn't understand. (I guess it was money but it had so many different names.)

At first we didn't understand how they came to China. We guessed they came from the surrounding countries. But there were so many and they spoke perfect Chinese so we figured that the Chinese in this area looked like that. (After finding the bus we didn't really care any more.)

When we arrived to Yang Shu, we found ourselves in a long street filled with local tourists (and some foreigners), and we wanted to find a good place to eat. We struggled ourselves out of the busy street to a side street and sat down in an empty restaurant with 20 (!!!) workers. (You'll figure out why. Wait a second.) We wanted to sit outside, but a huge wave of mosquitoes reached the chairs before us so we were forced to go back inside. It was really dark and we couldn't even see the menu. We asked to them to turn up the light and they did but just a little bit.

We ordered our food and as I started to take my first bite, I saw a rat in the size of a dog looking at me from the stairs behind Arik's back. So I told him, "Arik, we have to move." He turned around and ran to my side of the table. The rat did not move. He stayed there looking at us. It was his domain. We were intruding in his space.

Suddenly he jumped up three meters and went to the second floor and kept on looking at us. He won. We left . . . . and the 20 workers did their job and laughed.

A day later we rented bicycles to go to the Moon Hill Mountain. Soon enough we reached a turnpike with three possible ways and no signs once or ever. We didn't know where to go so I went to ask three old ladies that walked on the other side of the road. Guess what happened? I asked them and immediately each one of them pointed in a different direction. Then when they realized that it was funny, they all changed in the same way and pointed in other directions. What could I do? I laughed and they did too until another lady came and they started shouting in Chinese at one another. At the end I found the place. By myself.......

Hope you managed to keep up! After three days in Yang Shu we took a 12-hour night bus to Hong Kong. To be continued.....

P.S. The next email will be about a night bus to another world.