After our exhausting cycle day yesterday, we took it very easy on Saturday. We came down for a late breakfast and then spent 3 hours on the internet at the hostel.

Around 14:00 we ventured into town again, but regretted it almost straight away - it was 35 degrees again and we were still a bit fragile after Friday’s near heatstroke experience. We headed into a little airconditioned cafe on the main street where we had a light lunch while surfing the internet for free - a lot of restaurants and bars offer free internet in Yangshuo to try and get business. After a bit of retail therapy we felt strong enough again to bargain for bus tickets to Shenzhen (on the Hong Kong border).

We befriended the owner of a little travel agency in a quiet street, and after the obligatory bit of small talk, he offered us a very good rate for the sleeper bus tickets - a unique Chinese bus with bunk beds instead of seats. Also, we decided to splash a bit and treated ourselves with tickets for hotair balooning.

On Sunday morning the company picked us up at 05:30 and dropped us on a dirt road outside town from where the balooons took of. It wasn’t long before we were in the basket and ready for lift off. As we went higher and higher, the sun started rising and the scenery was just breathtaking. We reached 1000m and you could see karst hills streching as far as the eye can see - absolutely amazing. For a first time experience, we definately chose one of the most beautiful spots in the world to go hotair balooning!

There was not alot of wind but we still managed to drift away and landed on the other side of the mountain from where we took off. We had to wait for the help team to come and assist with moving the baloon to safer grounds and then we had to venture back to the road. As we landed in some field, this meant we had to climb under fences and walk through the river to a nearby little school building from where we were picked up again and brought back to town.

Back at the hostel we had a very nice breakfast (actually included in our room rate - very unusual in China) and then went back to bed for a few hours. At around 14:00 we hired a scooter in town and went exploring - this time in much more comfort (and a softer seat) than the bicycles. We rode for about 20km north of Yangshuo and stopped at a very small village, Yangdi, on the river. After a tough 15 minutes bartering, we managed to get a good price for a bamboo rafting ride downstream to the next town, Xingping - scooter and all! From Xingping we had to really go full throttle to make it back to Yangshuo to return the scooter before 19:00.

We ended a beautiful day with some local delicasies (but still no dog or snake meat) on the balcony of a little cafe on the main street.

Monday is our last day in this blissfull part of the country before we take the bus to Shenzhen at 21:00.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

Rolling into Yangshuo on Thursday afternoon, it was clear that this was going to be a much better experience than Guilin. The town is much smaller and really is set snugly amongst the massive rocky karst hills.

After sniffing around a few places for about 30mins we checked into the friendly Flowers Hostel, just west of the central part of town. It wasn’t long before we slapped on the sun-screen and started exploring - it’s getting hotter the further south we go.

We walked down a few of the well-known touristy streets before we got to the Li River, where Marizanne skillfully haggled a cheap bamboo boat ride from one of the locals. This part of the river is packed and we were but one of many little bamboo rafts motoring their way northwards in the direction of Guilin. We stopped off about 3km up stream and were each offered a small, spicy, bbq’d whole fish on a stick by our captain - very nice indeed, with heads & all.

The 40 minute cruise concluded where we had started on the ‘waterfront’ back in town, completing a thoroughly enjoyable little trip. The 20 Yuan we forked out for this seemed much more reasonable than the 450 Y they we charging for the pleasure of cruising all the way to Yangshuo from Guilin.. that’s why we took the bus for 16 Y each!

We continued strolling and window-shopping the many stalls and shops. Touts here are much more aggressive than we’ve experienced elsewhere in China and their persistence often makes for a less enjoyable interaction - but that’s just their style. We picked a restaurant ‘not’ advertising western food - not easy to find - and after flipping swiftly through the horse and dog meat specialities went with a beer-fish dish for 2. Beerfish is a local speciality, and as such is a little more pricy then the average dish, but it was well worth the extra few bob.

Moving further south have also steadily brought on more and more exotic dishes along the way. Menu entries like dog meat shavings, dog meat hot-pot and pictures of sad-looking Rottweilers aren’t even catching our eye anymore.. scary!

We woke up relatively early this morning to a perfect day. Renting a couple of bikes from the hostel (these ones actually had gears!) we set off on a carefully planned route. We made a couple of wrong turns but made our way past the Big Banyon Tree (not worth the entry fee) and Moon Hill. Being pestered by super-persistent old ladies selling water, we made our way up the steps to Moon Hill, which has a massive arch-like crater through the middle of it. It was around noon when the day started to really heat up and we realised that we had to hydrate or die..

We had a very nice and brief sit-down lunch at a cafe at the base of Moon Hill and then were on our way again. Backtracking a bit we then started on a path along the Yulong River, one of the Li’s attributaries, and this is where the scenery really started to live up to expectations. Cycling amongst lush green, towering hills stretching out as far as the eye could see, made us feel a million miles away from everything at times. Unfortunateley it was getting seriously hot and we were so drained that it often seemed an absolute mission just to get the camera out the bag to take a few shots. The camera was actually malfunctioning a few times because of the heat.

To our dismay the paved road running next to the river soon turned to gravel and it steadily got worse as we went along. It was around a certain point - at which we had had just about enough of the self-inflicted pain and started considering turning back - that we realised we had already passed the point of no return and turning back was actually the slightly longer way home than simply pushing on. We we trying to look on the bright side, thinking that we were past the half-way mark, but it was difficult to see through the salt-encrusted sweat layers on our sun glasses.

Stopping off at various picturesque spots along the way and quite often just pausing in the shade of a tree to try and break the extreme heat, we completed a large loop bringing us back onto the main road for the final 6km-odd into town. With the quality of maps around here it’s futile to try and estimate the distance covered (nothing too serious actually), but we had been riding for just under 7 hours.

Perhaps a couple of hours short of heat-stroke, and with extremely sore bums we struggled up to our 4th floor room in the Hostel and enjoyed lengthy cold showers and cold drinks in the comfort of our air-conditioned room.

We feel it especially appropriate at this point in our trip to make an honerable mention  and give thanks to the late Mr Willis Haviland Carrier, considered to be the father of the modern air conditioning system. Sir, we salute you.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

The Backstreet Hostel offers free transfers to some of the sights in town, so we booked one for Tuesday.

We were very happy about the late-ish pickup at 10:00 and the driver dropped us as the Solitary Beauty Peak in town. Like all the other sights in town, they charged an extortionate entrance fee for a little park with a few halls and a 152m high peak. The view from the top was not too great - partly due to the weather (it was raining all day) and the ugly buildings in between the karst hills around town.

A bit dissapointed, our driver picked us up at 11:30 to go to the Reed Flute Cave, 5km northwest of the city. Despite the high entrance price, the cave was worth visiting - it’s very big and again the stalactites and stalagmites were coloured by floodlights. This time our tour guide could actually speak a little English and tried very hard to explain the sights to us. From the caves we took a bamboo raft across 2 lakes (which was actually only 1 big lake devided into 2, but this was the raft owner’s biggest selling point!) to the parking area from where we caught the bus back to town.

We had a lazy afternoon and spent a few hours on the internet before dinner.

On Wednesday we decided to make our own way to the terraced rice fields called the Dragon’s Backbone. We had to catch 3 different busses to make the 90-odd km journey and we arrived in Ping’an at 14:40 after having left Guilin at 09:25.

At this stage we realised that a package tour to this place might have been worth the cash, as we had very little time left to explore. Unfortunately the day was a complete wash-out from the word go, but we had been hoping for a break in the weather as we only had this one chance to see it. In Ping’an, where the various trails through the terraces start, it was pooring down heavily with rain, but we pushed on with our one little umbrella.

After having progressed about 500 meters up the hill, a thick fog bank rolled in amazingly swiftly and within minutes we could not see further than a few meters. We promptly called it a day, backtracked to the bus stand and managed to get a 15:00 direct bus back to Guilin. It was a 9 hour, 180km round-trip for the pleasure of 15 minutes in the pooring rain.. some days are stones.

To top off a slightly irritating day, Jan had a small disaster as we walked through the front door of the Hostel. We had been covering the camera and lense with a flimsy little sling-bag to protect it from the rain, and it was right at this point that the strap broke and the camera fell a solid three feet onto the concrete floor. The average point-&-shoot might have bounced once or twice, but this camera/lense combination weighs in at around 2.5kg, and it as if it plugged when it hit the deck.

The lense-cap was fused to the filter and the batery door broke off, but amazingly the camera body still seems to operate and the lense came off unscathed by the looks of things. Thanks Canon!

A relaxed evening and following morning brought us to a noon departure for Yangshuo, and the promise of more sublime scenery.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

After leaving Heng Shan, we headed further south to Guilin. The bus trip from Heng Shan to Hengyan was only an hour, but there we could only get a bus at 15:00 to Guilin. Having arrived just after 10:00, this was not ideal so we decided to go to the train station instead. It was raining very hard all the way there and by the time we arrived in Hengyan the roads were completely flooded - so much so that people were walking almost knee-deep in the water!

As we had no idea how far the train station was, we got in a taxi only to find that the taxi driver has doctored his meter and it was going about 3 times as fast as it should have. After the hugely overpriced ride we heard that the only train that day to Guilin was leaving at 15:30 and the tickets were even more than the bus. Still raining at this stage, we headed back to the bus station and sat there (with our soaked bags) until 15:00.

The bus took 5 hours to do the 300km to Guilin and we arrived at about 20:00. Tired after another bumpy bus ride, we walked to the closest hostel but they were fully booked. We managed to get a very good rate at a little hotel next door from the hostel and checked in for 1 night. We had a flyer from another hostel in the center of town, so we walked there and made a reservation for the next 3 nights (at the same rate, but clean rooms and a much nicer atmosphere).

Guilin is a beautiful, scenic city with lots of karst hills and the Li River running through it, but the booming tourist trade has made it a challenge to enjoy its charms. The area around the bus and train stations are very bling with flashing, neon lights everywhere - not really the tranquil atmosphere we’ve seen on pictures and expected. But walking further north the city changes into pedestrianised streets with many little shops and cafe-style restaurants.

We ended our first night in Guilin with a very nice alfresco dinner in the city’s “Walking Street”. We pointed to very interesting looking dishes the Chinese family next to us had ordered and the waitress told us that if we ordered the same dishes off the English menu, the price is almost double. Aparently this is very common in Guilin to overcharge foreigners in restaurants.

Monday morning we checked into the Backstreet Youth Hostel we had reserved. It has a fantastic location and is a really great place with super friendly and helpfull staff (that can speak very good English).

The Lonely Planet raves about the Seven Star Park, so that was our first visit. The tourist sights in town levy heavy entry fees and we paid quiet a bit to see a relatively nice park (according to the book one of China’s most picturesque city parks, but we have our doubts), a small hill supposedly resembling a camel, a little, delapidated zoo and 2 caves (of which one was closed).

The Seven Star Cave was actually very impressive with a capacious chamber filled with huge stalactites and stalagmites coloured by floodlights. We had to follow a Chinese tour guide through the caves that only switched on the lights as the group approached a bizarrely named stalactite or stalagmite. As soon as the group moved forward, the lights would go off immediately, so there is a very small window of opportunity to take photos.

We were back at the hostel at around 19:00 and just relaxed for the rest of the evening, chatting to one of the staff members and learning about local life in Guilin.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.