Dragon´s Backbone Rice Terraces


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Asia » China » Guangxi » Dazhai
July 24th 2009
Published: July 27th 2009
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The plan was to go to the rice terraces at Ping´an. Although I heard Ping´an is very touristic and the rice terraces near the village of Dazhai were better, I wanted to go there because I thought it would be much harder to get a bus up to that village. From there, my plan was to walk to Dazhai and experience that part. In Guilin I had to find a bus to Longsheng, from which I would take the last bus. In front of the ticket office, I met three people that were also going to Longsheng and from there to Ping´an, so we decided to travel together. In Longsheng, it turned out that we had to wait almost two hours to get a bus to Ping´an, but there was a bus going to Dazhai immediately! So for me, the choice was very easily made. The others decided to come along with me, because they also didn´t want to see another very touristic spot. The trip was said to take 1 ½ hours, but we stopped at every village, loading and unloading cargo, people doing some shopping still etcetera which extended the trip with an hour. It was really funny to see this part of the real life of the locals! Among the passengers in the minivan were also a few chickens that were placed in the seat in front of me.

At arrival in Dazhai, it seemed that there were no tourists at all! The beautiful houses seemed all so authentic. Later, we found out that many new houses were build, probably because tourism is also in this village very prosperous. But for the day, we were the only (western) tourists. The rooms were also pretty good, except that they did not put new sheets on the bed and that they did not clean the bathrooms because they were filled with hairs. For the rest, everything was perfect! Especially the view was amazing.
For diner, we took the local speciality beer fish and some other dishes, like fried rice, fried vegetables and mushrooms with bamboo. I liked all of the dishes very much, so I´m cured of me saying that I don´t like Chinese food!

Because the others had to leave the next day, we decided to get up at six and walk the rice terraces. For breakfast we got the local breakfast bamboo rice. The rice is cooked with water in a piece of bamboo on top of a kind of barbeque. Although, eating rice in the morning that is pretty heavy, it was really nice. Together with some tea, it was a pleasant breakfast.

It was raining when we started our walk, but a bit of rain is refreshing in this area. We made it to the first lookout, which was really wonderful, but then it started to rain very hard and we had to hide somewhere. We ended up at a house where people were still working on. After having (a sort of) conversation with one of the girls, she offered me a small seat. But she took the seat from some small room and I went in to see what it was! It turned out to be a very small kitchen in which she was cooking something (she was the cook for the workers). Luckily, she invited us in there, so we sat down near a small fire and we even got white tea! The storm was not going to calm down, so we had to go down anyway. In the end, we found the right path, but by the time we got down, I was completely soaked. Soon after, my company left and I stayed alone in the hotel. The rest of the day I just relaxed is this beautiful area.



Additional photos below
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Our unexpected hostOur unexpected host
Our unexpected host

The cook for the builders of the house
How else to transport chickens?How else to transport chickens?
How else to transport chickens?

(I actually saw another transport of chickens go wrong ; the baskets fell of twice)


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