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Published: August 13th 2012
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We arrived in Yangshuo in the late afternoon of August 6th and checked into our hostel to relax a bit and clean up from the rice terraces. We then took a stroll into downtown and had some dinner. It got really busy as it got darker and we didn't walk around too much because we wanted to escape the crowds.
The next morning, we inquired about bamboo rafting and booked ourselves in for an afternoon raft ride. We then spent the morning walking the much less crowded streets of Yangshuo before taking a bus out to the raft start point. The raft ride was AWESOME. It was very relaxing - just the two of us and a guy paddling/steering. The views were awesome and we had a couple of fun little rapids to go down (many of which they took your picture as you went down then sold them to you - what is this, Disneyland?!) We had a great time.
After we got off the raft, we rented some bikes to go back into town. It was a really pleasant bike ride and the bikes we got were the nicest bikes we'd seen for
rent in China!! It was great. It started raining while we were biking but it was SO HOT that we just got wet. It felt SO NICE.
That night, we went back to West street (downtown bustling tourist area) to look for dinner. We decided to splurge on some Italian food and had some AMAZING pizza. Such a nice change from Chinese food!!
The next day, we rented bikes again and went out to this water cave thing just outside of town. The ads for it make it look really awesome but we were slightly disapointed when we got there. It was fun nonetheless. Thankfully we'd asked at our hostel how much it cost to go in because this was the first attraction we went to that required bargaining! They told us it'd be 50 yuan. When we arrived, we were told 'ok, we give you special price of 120.' To which we replied 'no, it costs 50.' 'Ok, ok, 80.' 'No, 50.' 'Ok, 70.' 'No, it's 50.' 'How about 60?' No, 50 is the price, that's all we'll pay.' To which they eventually complied. I wonder how many tourists paid 120?!
When we arrived, we first had a Chinese tour through the caves and the stalactices. They had all these cheesy coloured lights like we were in Disneyland and I think it would have been better without them. It's like everything in China needs to be tacky. Anyways, after the tour, we were brought to the mud bath. It was really fun to go swimming in the mud though it was SO COLD and the pool area was much smaller than the pictures would lead you to believe. We then cleaned off before heading to the hot spring. The hot spring was also smaller and colder than we'd expected. We didn't spend much time there. It was a fun experience, and my skin did feel good from the mud, but not worth more than 50 yuan!!
We had lunch at a little hut near the cave and just sat around for a while. We were both feeling lazy. Tourism is getting very, very tiring. We then started biking back into town. We stopped at a passionfruit farm and had some fresh juice which was really good. We sat around there for a while. Then we went into
town and chilled on our hostel roof for a while. We eventually got hungry and went for some dinner in town. The place we went didn't at all give us what we ordered and we were unhappy. Some Brits started walking in to the restaurant but we were sitting at the front and told them not to eat at the place. Pretty funny. Wish we'd had someone like that to help us!
The next morning we had a lazy morning strolling through Yangshuo one last time. It's really small so there isn't much to see. We then caught a bus to the airport at 3pm to depart from Guangxi!
-Dafne
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