Guilin/Yangshuo

J with local kids
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Again, a good train journey from Beijing to Guilin, with enough sleep to get us though the 27hrs, including a Dutch lesson or two.

We took a bus from Guilin to Yangshuo, which took 1 hr and got dropped off in the wrong place (so we found out after a few hours as we could not figure out where places were on the map).

We were harrassed by a tout, insisting on showing us some hotels. When none of the hotels appealed to us, we told him to leave us alone, which was the best thing we could have done as he was making us believe that the hotels he showed us were the ones that came recommended in our travel guide (the names of the hotels displayed were in Chinese.. we are not that dumb..).

Floating terraces
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In the end, I installed myself on the street with all our luggage while J went to explore the town on his own. He found a great guesthouse/hotel: Bamboo House Inn/Cafe at the end of West Street (Xijie - Yangshuo's main street), one of the best rooms ever with tv/dvd, aircon (required as it was pretty cold) as well as a great bathroom and bed with fresh sheets and towels, that were changed every day.

Yangshuo is situated to the south of Guilin city, on the banks of the Li River. The village was built in 590 during the Sui dynasty. The region is dominated by limestone karst: steep, tree-covered mounds ranging from 100-300m high.

J helping old man with his peanut harvest
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The next days we relaxed, enjoyed the fact that here the Chinese did speak english and had some really good food (and loads of stomach problems due to MSG) - we can recommend the breakfast at a place called 'Le Balcony'.

On one of the days we took a local bus to Yangdi Town (Yuan 8 - 1 hr) from where we did a 5 hr hike to XingPing Town (see picture of the floating terraces). This walk took us through some really nice scenery, with the meandering river winding its way around the limestone cliffs. Surrounding the river were many rice fields, orange trees, peanut crops and vegetable gardens.

Old man watching his water buffalos
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The peaks in this area have very interesting names such as: Nine-horse Painting Hill, Beauty Before the Mirror, Dating between a Monk and a Nun, Chaoban Hill, Lotus Cave and Grandpa eating Apple.

The walk crosses the Li river three times and the first two ferry rides are inlcuded in the ticket you buy at Yandi town (Yuan 16). Although we were harrassed by locals telling us that it was not possible to cross the river by ferry (and therefore they would have to take us all the way down the river to XingPing Town by bamboo raft), we did continue with the walk to find that there were no problems or whatsoever with any of the ferries...

Yangshuo's West Street
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After 5 days we decided to take a sleeper bus to Shenghzen, where we would cross the border to visit Hong Kong.