Yangshuo + Giggling Tree Hostel in China
Yangshuo, China and The Giggling Tree Hostel
Up above is a collection of video clips taken with my Canon Point & Shoot camera. I think it gives a good impression of part of that leg of our trip.
We stayed at the Giggling Tree Hostel in Aishanmen - one of the small villages that surround Yangshuo proper. It was… picturesque and a much better choice than staying at any of the hostels that were in the actual city part of Yangshuo. There wasn’t even a paved road for the last 3/4 of a mile leading up to the building. Now, even though it’s a small town in the south of China - things are actually more expensive in Yangshuo than they are in Beijing. This is basically a highway town and their main business is tourism. So. Getting a taxi to go the 1.5 miles from the Giggling Tree Hostel back into town? 30 Yuan. (For comparison, it’s something like 7 yuan for the 1st ten kilometers by taxi in Beijing.)
And be careful while you’re in town because you’ll definitely get ripped off here if you’re careless. (We didn’t have any problems in ANY of the other areas of China - maybe it was just our turn.)
For those reasons and the general atmosphere we felt in town - we were very happy to be staying outside and surrounded by the fields and karst peaks. Oh. The food prices at the Giggling Tree are slightly more expensive than what we were paying in Beijing also - but whatever. Still. You arrive, check in, and then start doing stuff. Rent a bicycle, ride around and go all over - all of your expenses are tallied and then totalled at the end of your stay so you aren’t paying every time you order food or do something. There wasn’t air conditioning when we stayed there but they were installing the units that week so the rooms probably have a/c now.
The owners are a dutch couple who were tour operators/guides in China for several years before they decided to open up the Giggling Tree. Very nice and accommodating - but their tour guide/sight seeing arrangements aren’t as good as you’ve probably experienced at other hostels. Their staff handle most of the services and arrangements - and they can get you a taxi into town - but that’s the majority of their ability. If you need anything arranged beyond that, they’ll get you a taxi so you can go to one of the ‘travel/tour’ operators in Yangshuo proper.
This became an issue when we were trying to book our trip up to Longshen to see the rice terraces and when we tried to purchase some airplane tickets. Our first couple of experiences trying to book the next portion of our trip - basically sealed our impression of Yangshuo proper and we both wanted to leave town AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. - Here’s one of our entries we posted while we were there. Clearly we were ready to leave town.
After desperately failing at booking any travel arrangements, we stumbled upon Robert at Travel World. It’s a booth just across from The KFC (yes, KFC) in the ‘old town’ - below is the scanned image of his card as it is glued in my journal. He basically saved our trip at that point. He arranged a good tour up to Longshen (good as in, we rode in a nice bus and not just a crowed van) and then also got us plane tickets with no hassle - we had an earlier experience that ate up 2.5 hours of our time.
Still. If we were to go back, we definitely wouldn’t stay in town and would probably check out the Giggling Tree again.
I would post their information but their website is pretty complete and you can definitely reach them both by phone and by email. I was emailing back and forth with my blackberry while we were on the 24 hour train ride from Beijing to Guilin… and that’s our review/resource guide to Yangshuo and the Giggling Tree Hostel.
Oh one more thing. Look for me near the bottom left corner of this photo - I’m on the bike.
