After our Yangtze cruise we had a one-hour scenic coach ride to Yichang, a short taxi ride to the train station, a 2-hour wait, a 5-hour train journey to Wuhan, a 5-hour wait and then a 12-hour sleeper train to Guilin. The joys of travelling! We arrived in Guilin around midday feeling a bit spaced-out after our 26 hours of travelling. We spent 2 nights in Guilin walking beside the lake and river, eating some great cheap street food and sleeping alot.
We then got on a bus for 3 hours to an area known as the Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces, where the rice fields rise up to 1000m high and are an amazing feat of farm engineering. The terraces are dotted with small minority villages and many of them have guest houses. The bus dropped us off in Da Zhai and then we had a 1-hour walk up hill to a village called Tian Tou Zhai. It was hard work walking with my backpack but the views were spectacular. There were ladies in traditional clothes with huge baskets on their backs offering to carry my pack for a small fee but many of the these ladies were much older than me and it didn't seem appropriate letting them carry my bag even though they are as strong as an ox and have calves like Olympic cyclists!
The Miao people live in Tian Tou Zhai and we had a very warm welcome from the ladies in the guesthouse. The view from our window over the rice terraces was amazing. We spent 2 nights here and enjoyed long walks around the terraces, watching the high-heeled Chinese girls struggling their way up and down the paths and hanging out with the ladies who sit outside the guest house sewing and selling their beautiful hand-made tablecloths, clothes, bags etc.
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| The ladies in this area never cut their hair and tie it in this traditional way |
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| Tian Tou Zhai |
We then left the beautiful rice terraces and made our way by bus to Yangshuo, famous for its dramatic Karst landscape. We stayed for 5 nights at The Culture House, which is run by Mr Wei , who speaks very good English, and his family. The Culture House provides 3 meals a day and it was a great place to stay. We also enjoyed meeting and chatting with the other guests over dinner.
On one of the days we got the local bus to Yangdi, negotiated a price for a bamboo raft, and had a very enjoyable ride down the Li River to XingPing. The weather was overcast but the scenery was still spectacular. We saw a few men with cormorants, which have been used for over 1000 years by people in this area to catch fish, but are now mainly on show for the tourists.
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| Xingping on the Li River |
We also had a very enjoyable day on bicycles, cycling along the Yulong river. We got lost a few times, Nic's bike got a puncture and on several occasions we had to push the bikes between paddie fields but we had a great time, the sun was shining and the scenery was wonderful. We then cycled to Moon Hill, which has a big circular hole in the middle of it and then cycled back to the guesthouse waving and smiling at the hundreds of happy, wobbly Chinese tourist on bikes and tandems.
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| The beautiful Yulong river |
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| Bamboo raft anyone? |
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| Industriuos farmers planting rice |
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| Typical karst scenery |
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| Puncture repair man who only charged us 50p |
After leaving Yangshuo we had a 6-hour bus journey to Nanning. We stayed at a hostel near the bus station and the following day we caught the bus to Halong City in Vietnam.
We've enjoyed our first month in China but the overnight train journeys and the pollution takes its toll. The southern part of China is very green and has spectacular scenery and we're looking forward to exploring more the south when we return to China in a couple of weeks.
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