OMG. After a horrible morning, we were fortunate enough to take part in a cooking class in a small village - that was being filmed for a Hong Kong Television show!
It was quite awesome. They obviously shot a bit of footage and we’ll see how long the segment is and how much either of us are in it however, it should be pretty cool to see the finished clip - since there were only five people. Leah and Mark, the teacher, the Dutch owner of our hostel, and then the show’s host.
It’s for a Hong Kong travel show… I think the producer said the name is “What a Wonderful World” and it’ll also show up in North America on cable somewhere - however! Judy (the host!) and Avis (an excellent staff writer) accepted our ‘friend cards’ that we hand out and said they would email pictures that we took together, and then also hopefully a dvd copy of the segment. So that’ll be cool. Oh yeah. I didn’t have my camera (the one F’in time this whole trip) because what was supposed to be a short trip into town, turned into a 2 hour excursion while we tried to buy a plane ticket to the next city. Long story - and I don’t want to drag it up - see the ealier entry on Yangshuo.
But the food was great. The cooking school is in a small village a few minutes bike ride away from the village we are staying in right now and we cooked a local specialty - BeerFish - and then also some local style dumplings. - Both were awesome and cooking was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we had a larger lunch with the entire film crew - Hey. It wasn’t our own travel/cooking show, but it was still very nice to take part in one! Score.
So while there have been some really frustrating times here in Yangshuo, nearly every second of every minute outside of the city and in the villages has been awesome.
Tomorrow we leave Yangshuo and make it up to the Dragon’s BackBone - the Rice Terraces. Then we’ll be back to a hostel with a decent internet connection - and I can catch up on my huge backlog of work! Oh man. I wonder what the yelling will be like when I get back to the office?
Of course. It was bound to happen. Not all travel and exploring comes without a price. You can’t always have a great time and when you put yourself out there, on a limb, or looking for some discovery - you open yourself up to being taken. Fantastic dreams and chamber of commerce brochures always forget to mention the part about being pegged as a tourist and being treated as such - as a negative and not the friendly ‘oh you’re from far away, come, be our new friend’ sort of friendliness that we have grown not only accustomed to, but also has given us a naive lens through which we view things. - Granted, it’s always hard to balance being open to meeting people while safeguarding enough that you’re not put in danger, or at the very least, simply ripped off.
Yangshuo is a highway town. It’s deep in China’s famous Karst peaks, but it also straddles the highway. Fortunately for us, we’re staying at a hostel about 20 minutes outside of town by bicycle - unfortunately for us, we’ve had to come into town everyday for one reason or another. It being highway town, and one heavily traveled by not only foreign tourists from around the world, but also many people from all over China itself - the local people are here for one reason - to sell things to the tourists.
But the energy here is different. It doesn’t feel like the postcards. It doesn’t feel like the people understand the symbiotic nature of the economic stimulus that tourism brings - rather, I get this vibe that many of the people here in Yangshuo proper, feed like parasites. Although that may be too harsh. Yet… it brings the correct connotations if not the right degree of feeding - from everywhere in town. It’s hard to fault them, but it’s also hard to enjoy yourself when the tourism industry here doesn’t feel as friendly as even say - Beijing, where with it’s insanely huge urban sprawl and exponential population - I would dare say that I found more genuine, and honest people in Beijing than most of Yangshuo proper.
Things haven’t been terrible, or anywhere near anything that could be considered ‘dire’ or serious… just frustrating to the point of me exclaming - “I f*cken hate this town and when are we leaving?!”
