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Published: October 31st 2007
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After a long journey involving a 4 hour bus journey, 14 hour overnight train and then another hour bus journey we arrived at
Yangshuo at just before 6am. We didn't know anything about the place we were going to and had no time to read up about it other than it had spectacular scenery and as we both slept on the last bus journey we were confused to hear the others talking about the views and cliffs...until we looked up outside the hotel and saw these giant karsts mountains!!
After the busy cities we had been in this town was laid back and seemed to be a backpackers town...there were more westerners here than we'd seen in the whole of the trip. We recognised food on the menu although we still ate Chinese food as much as possible although it was nice to have egg, bacon, sausages etc for breakfast!!!
Outside of the main streets of Yangshuo it was real countryside which we'd all been looking forward too, along with rice fields, farms, water buffalo in amongst great scenery. We hired bikes for a day and cycled round for hours...this involved cycling through the main street and although it
wasn't Beijing it was still busy with mad drivers, cyclists and pedestrians everywhere...tooting their horns just to remind us they were there.
The bike ride was full of incidents before we'd really got started...first of all we lost 3 people at the first roundabout, they went the wrong way and 15 minutes later they realised and had to cycle back to catch us up. While we were waiting 2 people in the group decided to go off ahead but then we couldn't find them! Our tour guide, Dragon, left us in a village and went to look for them on his own. The people in the village all looked at us strangely as we sat and waited watching their everyday lives...we watched them play Mahjong in the street (the game we had learnt on the Yangtze boat) then we saw someone preparing dinner. That nights menu was chicken, the chicken was running around the garden one minute and the next....well you can imagine!!! 30 minutes later we were still waiting, the 2 that had wandered off had returned but we were still waiting for Dragon, it turned out he had suffered a puncture. Our 3 problems behind us we
were off again!!
Half way through the bike ride a few of us decided to climb a nearby mountain called Moon Hill due to the spectacular arch way at the top. 600 steps later we reached the bottom of the arch only to find that we could actually go right to the top. Madly we decided to take the challenge, no steps this time just muddy slopes zig zaggng to the top. Unfortunately when we got to the top 50 or so Chinese school children had also decided to climb so there was no room at the top to stand and admire the sheer drop down!
On the way down to safe ground our team turned into international rescue as one of the poor Chinese girls that we saw at the top had collapsed. Quick thinking by Anders from our group, and we constructed a bamboo stretcher to carry her down to the waiting ambulance....we found out the next day she was luckily ok. A great international effort by Chinese, Swedish, Canadian, English, Kiwi's and even an American!!
Yangshuo is on the River Li so we all thought we'd go on a boat trip. We picked up
Moon Hill
Somehow we climbed to the top!! a boat out of town and then took the boat back to Yangshuo passing the mountains on the way...near the end we thought that the captain of the little wooden boat was stopping for us to take a good photo but he moored up and asked us to leave the boat. Apparently he could not take the boat any further...he did not explain why....rather dodgy we thought....so we all had to wander along the shore line of the river before getting to the road and walk back to town. How things happen in China!!!!
One evening we went to see a light show which people come to from all over the country to see, it was set on a lake with the karsts in the background with over 700 people in the show. The director of the show is also going to be the director of the opening ceremony for the Olympic games next year and if this show is anything to go by it will be amazing.
Yangshuo was definitely one of the highlights of the trip and we were all sad to leave Yangshuo as we looked forward to our last overnight train in China. The
Half way up Moon Hill
Just under the crescent next and final stop on our grand tour of China is Hong Kong.
We are having trouble uploading photo's as we have a slow connection so we will add some more as soon as we can.
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Andy
non-member comment
International Rescue ?
I didn't know you were members of Thunderbirds - International Rescue - F.A.B. Or should that be Thuderpants with all the Chinese food you're consuming ? Well done and glad the little girl was ok. Keep up the blog it's brill and glad you're managing some time to relax...