Yangshuo - small town with a little bit of everything

Our bike ride through the countryside
see all photos »

Yet one more overnight train ride (that makes 3 thus far in case you are counting) and we arrived in Yangshuo. It is a small touristy town in southern China. When I say small, I mean that the town itself holds only 30,000 or so residents – this is relative to every other city we’ve been through where I think the smallest population was 4 million. The scenery is stunning in that the village is surrounded by limestone karsts. The other benefit is that it has plenty of western oriented restaurants and by this time, we are all dying for something like pizza. Sure enough, both nights we went for western food. Sad to say, I know, but we have been doing pretty well up until now.

Kayaking on the Li River
see all photos »

The city is full of interesting activities, craft markets and services. Nothing better than a one hour foot massage that costs less than $10. Our favorite time here was our full day bike tour with our local guide Manuel (his chosen name) through the countryside. We climbed Moon Hill and had lunch at a local farmers house where he cooked us a fantastic meal. We loved it.

For our final morning, we decided to kayak down the Li River. The water was quite calm which offered us beautiful reflections of the karsts along the way, but on the downside, required us to work a little (ok a lot) harder to get to our finish point. This was yet another local immersion in that the gentleman that picked us up at the river’s edge did so in a little tractor, dropped us at the bus so we could ride back into town with all of the locals (many with interesting stares). We did make friends however with a cute elderly woman when I offered her some of my banana cake on the bus. She seemed to love it – too bad I didn’t have more to share with everyone!

Our bike group and local guide
see all photos »

Next we are on to Hong Kong for our final night on the China tour.