Yangshuo

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Our overnight train arrived at Guilin quite early in the morning and we had to drive for another hour to get to Yangshuo. On the drive there you're surrounded by karst hills (very pointy, picturesque looking hills) -it was really nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of the huge cities we'd been to and to be in a more rural, less polluted setting. Yangshuo is quite touristy but I think that somehow gives it some of it's charm. There are lots of bars, cafes and loads of little shops to wander round.

In the afternoon we went to the Li river which is just the most stunning setting you can imagine. We got on bamboo rafts and went for a cruise up the river- it''s so peaceful and you're still surrounded by these beautiful karst hills. After a while we stopped at the side of the river where there was a small market (once again quite touristy!) There was a lady walking round with a bull, trying to sell rides! There were also several cormorant fishers (that use their birds to catch the fish and then take the fish off them!) who were offering for people to pose for pictures with their cormorants (for money of course!) and the coolest thing for me was a man with a large python who was offering for people to be photographed with it (this is something I'd wanted to do for a long time so I bit the bullet and paid him to hold his snake!) In the evening we went to a restaurant and tried beerfish (the local speciality.. although none of us found it that great as it was quite bony!)


The next day we all hired bikes and went on a bike ride. As we'd travelled quite a bit further south, the weather was getting noticeably hotter and this day was particularly sunny and warm! We stopped at the bottom of a very unusually shaped hill with a hole in the middle! Ricky (our tour guide) told us he'd wait at the bottom and half way up we began to realise why- there's a lot of steps and it was a very hot day! The crazy thing about this walk up was that 2 Chinese ladies (I would've put them in their seventies) followed us the whole way up trying to sell us drinks (they know people will want a cold drink when they got to the top!) They were quite amazing as I bet they must do the climb several times a day and all for the sale of 3 bottles of cold water- it shows just how desperate they must be really. Some of us chose to ignore the no entry sign and climb right to the top of the hill- the view from the top was pretty amazing. After we came down we had lunch in a farm restaurant and then cycled back. Me and some of the girls had seen some very cheap pedicures advertised so we decided to go and pamper ourselves after such an exhausting morning! In the evening we caved and went to a pizza restaurant. Chinese food does get a bit heavy when you have it night after night and as Yangshuo was more touristy they had plenty of western food which might sound bad seeing as we were in China but it was a bit of a relief as a lot of the food we'd been eating was quite spicy too!

The next day some of us had signed up for a Chinese cooking class. First of all the lady took us to the market where they buy all their food. This was quite an eye opener as there were dead, skinned dogs hanging up and still lots of livestock stuck in cages awaiting their fate- I didn't have a problem with it but it does make you think about where your food is coming from! Me and Jess bought a very exotic looking fruit which caught our eye called a Pommolo- a type of citrus fruit. It was a bit disappointing when we got to cut it open though! After we'd bought the ingredients we needed we headed over to the restaurant where our class would take place. We learned how to make the local beerfish speciality, a spicy chicken dish and vegetarian dumplings which were lovely! It's all quite simple stuff and they use a lot of the same ingredients and flavours for their dishes. That afternoon we headed back to Guilin to catch our last overnight train to Hong Kong, our final destination...

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