Farming on the edge - Hiking the Longji Rice Terraces

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It took three different buses and a half hour walk to find our next accommodation. We trekked up into the mountains to stay at a small village called Dazhai up in the Longji Rice Terraces. We stayed at a basic guesthouse and spent the evening at another little place which was lit up with neon lights despite being in the middle of nowhere.

The Terraces themselves are quite amazing, with an intricate series of tunnels and pipelines ensuring that water gets to all of the individual paddies... and they are up on the top of some bloody steep hills! Some of the paths we hiked along are hundreds of years old and took decades (or longer) to build which isn't that hard to imagine considering it basically meant heaving great rocks up the mountainside!

We walked the next day high into the mountains to another village, seeing some spectacular scenery and working up quite a sweat at times up the many steps. Farmer Tang, our guide, gave us lots of history of the paths and the terraces and was very sweet. Along the way we stopped at another little village where the women have the longest hair in the world - they only cut it when they are 1 month old and again just before they marry.

We stayed the night at Ping'an, where the women gave us a cultural show with dancing and singing which we joined in on towards the end. One of the dances involved blindfolded people searching out someone in the circle. Stefan was the unlucky one and after a few misses (he picked Mick and then Erin who passed) he found his girlfriend Joyce and they finished the dance and drank a few rice wines (apparently they are now married!).

The next morning we slept in and then headed down to catch a bus to Guilin and our next train journey back to Hong Kong before we fly out to Ireland.

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Photos

Boys and Beer
Mick and Matt wouldn't let a little thing like hiking remote hillsides get in the way of a good beer. Thanks Greg for the awesome pose!

New Friends
Mick with some of the hill tribe women

The "Wedding"
Joyce and Stefan drinking local rice wine during a "wedding" dance we all joined in

Chinese Eating Dogs
Need we say more...they do look like Dingoes though!