Our adventure began early in the morning at a Chinese bus station. It's truly crazy to enter a building where the only sign you can read is "TOILET." We drove 3 hours through gorgeous green China countryside.
We went to the famous island of Gu Lang and stayed at a quirky hostel - my first experience at one - and bunked with some overly friendly mosquitos.
Gu Lang was not what we expected. We thought: island, beaches, waves, tropical and wild, not a ton of people, right? Wrong. Gu Lang is a huge tourist destination island complete with cutely paved roads, decorative street lamps, shops, sea food restaurants, hotels, French influenced quaint buildings, etc. But there is a college of art and design and a music school on the island. Random but actually quite enjoyable.
The trees were insanely amazing!
We walked around the whole island which delightfully took about 5 hours total. We wandered down on some golden beaches...
We ate purple ice cream and drank out of a coconut...
We climbed around a wall and snuck into an abandoned and closed off building - we thought it was the old hospital...
We watched the city at night and then followed people into a tunnel which took us to the inner side of the island, where the "real" people live and work away from the glitz and glamour.
The next day we got caught in a wonderful storm. We found a cute little American restaurant, sat outside under a huge umbrella, ate fluffy pancakes, potatoes, omlettes, and fresh juice, all while watching the storm pass across the green ocean before us, showering rain. Beautiful.
A cool strong breeze, dark clouds, the green churning sea = AMAZing.
A cool strong breeze, dark clouds, the green churning sea = AMAZing.
Shantou, Jiexi, Hong Kong, Xiamen.
4 cities down.
Now like 10 gabillion more to go...isn't China exciting?
