Lumpy Bits

When we started planning our trip 3 years ago China's lumpy bits (the area around Guilin and Yangshuo) was high on our list of places we want to visit.

We had flown into Guilin from Shangri-La, via Kunming.  Not as cheap as the bus and train alternative, but 2-3 days quicker, so well worth the extra expense at this stage in our trip.  We stayed the night in Guilin in the backstreet youth hostel before getting onto the boat for our trip down river to Yangshuo.  The trip itself was very good.  We went on the cheaper Chinese speaking tour, which wasn't recommended by our hotel, but we decided to let the scenery do the talking.  I think we made the right decision as we had a very nice boat, and the food was good.  But we went without being able to understand the commentary telling us what each of the limestone formations looked like, never mind.

buffalo with amazing clarity

In Yangshuo the boats drop people off about 1km from town, and we had all our bags with us, so we had to carry these along the corridor of souvenirs whilst we were looking for a taxi to take us out to the Giggling Tree Guesthouse that we had booked into.  This took ages and mades us cross.  Although Alex did get to pose for a photo with some fishing cormorants, so that was good.

Next day we rented a couple of bikes and went for a ride around the stunning scenery, we mostly knew where we were going, but it wasn't too bad, and we had a good lunch of the local beer fish speciality.  We cycled a long way in the end, all the way back into town for a bit of shopping.  However, the rains came down, and the 5 km cycle back got us VERY wet, so our last night in China was in a room full of drying clothes.

The scenery around Guilin is spectacular, the paddy fields were mostly green and full of water, reflecting the limestone towers and water buffalo with amazing clarity, lots of photos here.