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Published: February 12th 2007
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the mountains surrounding the Yulong River
Got to be the most beautiful scenery in the whole of China wow....
what a weekend!
On Thursday 6 of us laden with backpacks went to Shenzhen. Me, Laura, Em, Nadia, Sian and Doris. While the rest of them chilled out in a cafe and went shopping, i attempted to find us a way for us to get to Guilin by nightfall. Trains, buses, Sleeper Buses...all booked up! I was beginning to think we would never get there but in the end we paid tripple the price of a bus, hopped on a plane, and were there in an hour. So it really was rather convienient if a little stressful at the time!
(Later in Yangshuo i met a guy who i had met at the Shenzhen bus station, who had bought one of the last tickets, and he said that they'd had road blocks and bricks thrown at the bus windows...perfect example of God looking out for us!)
We stayed in Guilin for the night, then the next day, Sian, Doris and I went onto Yangshuo.
Yangshuo is possibly the coolest place i've been to in China. Its a little town, still quite old (although becoming very touristy) set in the most beautiful area of China (Guanxi province) I have never seen
so many incredible mountains and rivers.
So the first day we dumped our bags in the youth hostel, shed a few layers (it was hot!) and wandered round the markets and shops along Xi Jie (nicknamed foreigners street) and wandered round a park and up to the Green Lotus Peak. Then when it got dark we went on a 'conglomorate fishing' trip. The fishermen paddle up the river with a load of ducks, who dive under the water and catch the fish. Rather cruelly, their necks are tied with string, so that the fish dont go down into their stomachs and the fisherman get the lot. It was a pretty cool thing to see though, and a rather cunning way of catching fish, as the birds do all the work.
The next day we got up and bad breakfast slowly, then rented bikes and attempted to cycle along the Yulong (Dragon) river to the Moon Hill. We didnt quite make it to the moon hill, as we cycled the wrong way, but it was still amazing to see the river and the mountains, everything was so upclose and magnified and stunning! we met an old lady selling flowers
and decided to bless her by giving her quite a bit more than the flowers were worth, but its hardly anything to us, and we managed to tell her that Jesus loved her. Later on some kids came up and we gave them the flowers, they were probably wanting to sell them on, but we gave them them anyway as they seemed so happy about it! Mid way through the 5hr cycle we stopped off at a family fun sort of farmhouse, who fed us egg fried rice! It was a pretty cool day!
Then the next day was even better! We signed up for a kind of kyaking trip and were taken to a nearby town, given a kyak each and then they sent us on our way with a hand scribbled map of the river! It was just the 3 of us and another tourist from the Uk called Ted slowly drifting down the Li River! It was 3 hours of kyaking with a stop in the middle for lunch at a little village, Liugong. We arrived and they seemed to be having some kind of party, the whole village was eating hotpot together and we were
lucky enough to see the festivities, Lion Dances, Fire Crackers, Dragon dance things it was so cool! once again they rustled up some egg fried rice for us! The scenery along the river and the splendor of Gods creation stretched for miles and miles! reminded of the song Indescribable by Chris Tomlin:
"From the highest of hights to the depths of the Sea,
Creation's revealling your majesty!"
After finishing our kyak journey, dripping wet and with sore arms, we got on a public bus back to Yangshuo, packed manically, jumped in a taxi back to Guilin and managed to catch our Sleeper Bus. It was my first time on a chinese sleeper bus and i was pretty impressed! There were probably about 30 beds on board, it was pretty comfy and i managed to sleep for a significant amount of the 12 hours back to Shenzhen!
So....the most important thing to know about this story is...
Go to Yangshuo!!!
I am definately going back, i only saw about half of what i wanted to see but still it was amazing!
xx
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