Xingping Downpour

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So, We made it back to Yangshuo after a night in Xingping. This time without the early morning adventures.

Xingping was beautiful. We had lots of fun there depsite the constant rain and the "wet cold" that the rain brought with it. It's a small enough rural town and that we saw no modern heating except in our hostel. It was pretty peaceful, and quiet. You don't notice how used to the city noises you get until you leave them behind! The Hostel itself was great (called "this old place hostel"). They even had firebrick oven roasted pizza that was pretty good. We splurged twice and went western with the pizza.

We had great plans of taking full advantage of the rural setting to go hiking, and biking, and see some caves, etc.... After an overnight bus and the adventures of early morning Yungshuo however, that was a bit too much. We had good intentions until we dropped off our bags in the room and proceded to fall asleep for a number of hours! However we eventually pulled ourselves out of bed decided to go for a walk at least around town and hopefully towards some caves. Walking around town was easy but finding the caves not so easy. We did however find the location of the picture on the back of the 20y note. That was a nice walk along the river that we would definitely recommend. It was great until the downpour hit us! It had never really stopped raining since we hit town but mostly it was a slight drizzle. It of course didn't turn to a downpour till we were a decent clip from town.

After drying off in a nice warm cafe down one of the side streets (one of the few places not completely open to the frigid air) we headed back to the hostel for our second round of fire brick oven pizza! There we ran into another two americans also enjoying some nice pizza with a clay fire coal pot under the table to keep them warm. It was a nice twist of fate, for we later ended up running into keith and kristy multiple times both in Xingping and later in Yungshuo. In fact one of Kristy's best friends works in Elko, NV for Newmont! What a small world afterall.

So looking back at Xingping.... This Old place hostel was definitely the place to crash at. Rooms were great, and it seemed the best chance to meet up with other traveller's. The weather was both good and bad. I'm glad we came during this time of year. the Fog and rain and just general weather seemed to add to some of the mysticism surounding the place with the abrupt and dramatic hills. It was a bit cold and wet but that just required a bit more planning. I wouldn't mind swinging by again a second time during the summer just to see what it's like when it's warm.

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Photos

Pizza!
Not only was the crust good but the ingredients were pretty decent.

Fire Brick Oven
Pretty sweet fire brick oven right in the main lobby of "This Old Place" hostel.

Rain and the back of the 20y
So we found the approximate location of were the picture from the back of the 20 china yuen note was from. Unfortunately the downpour started catching up to us!