Yangshuo

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The train to Guilin wasn't too bad despite the fact that we were travelling hard seat - the cheapest class of seat available. The train was crowded and a little uncomfortable but entertainingly during the journey some of the train staff starting selling children's toys and insoles to the passengers. I don't know if that's part of their job or a way to make a little extra money but they were certainly doing it with more than a little enthusiasm with displays and a lot of what I assume to be sales talk about the merits of those particular insoles / spinnning tops. Sadly the man sat opposite us bought two of the spinning tops for his children who played with them for several hours of the journey, which doesn't sound too bad but the tops continuously played renditions of "Happy Birthday" as they were spinning. For hours.

Anyway, we arrived in Guilin and got straight on a bus for another hour until we reached Yangshuo. We were quite tired by this stage but thankfully our friend Wulf, who was in the area visiting his girlfriend's family and who was due to travel on with us to Vietnam, had already booked us a room in the Bamboo Guest house saving us the bother of lugging our packs around and trying to find somewhere to stay.

Yangshuo is an interesting town. It's quite relaxed and pretty but there are a lot of foreign tourists around as it's quite famous as a back-packer hang-out (we saw at least 4 other ELA's from the British Council during our stay here). All of which makes it quite easy to get western food should you have a craving for it. In fact it's the only place in China where I've seen shepherd's pie on the menu!

We met up with Wulf and his girlfriend Susan for dinner and a few drinks before going back to the hotel and possibly the most comfortable beds in China! In the end we decided to hire some bikes for the day and take a tour of the local scenery. It'd been a while since I'd been on a bike for any length of time, years most probably, and the next few hours definitely took their toll. That said, it was amazing. The scenery was absolutely stunning, real "post card" China; mountains, rivers, rice paddies, fields and peasants in conical hats.

We cycled through several small villages but the locals were obviously used to seeing foreigners cycling through their homes as, unlike most places in China, there were no stares and shouts of "laowai!" (foreigner). One of the highlights of the trip was probably when Michael was cycling slowly through a vegetable patch on the outskirts of one of the villages. Not wanting us to disturb the locals he signalled for Richard and I to keep quiet and promptly fell sideways into a row of cabbages. He then tried and failed to make a dignified return while Richard and I tried not to wet ourselves laughing.

That evening we again met up with Wulf and Susan for dinner and a few drinks. The next day we took a stroll through the town and walked up a mountain (actually it was more of a glorified hill) in the public park and got some decent views over the town. Then it was time for us to go back to Nanning via Guilin before leaving for Vietnam the next day.

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Photos

Rich and Mike
notice the "around Somerset" tea-towel in the background

Comments

[Steph]

Somerset
Glad to hear that you're having a wicked time. I appreciated the "around Somerset" teatowel.... I guess it's a small world! :-) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[sarah davis]

halo
halo,hope you are well and having lots of fun. amy is travelling at the moment and she is currently in vietnam too! her email is [e-mail] take care xx