Yangshuo!

Hey guys, Yangshuo is amazing.

I decided to publish this post today, although I have several more waiting from the last days. (Pandas et al.)

So the posts on my blog will not follow my journey anymore, but I think that is not really necessary anyway.

Yangshuo is often cited as the most beautiful place in China. Well, the town itself is definitely what draws loads of tourists to this place: It is a place that practically grew around a crapload of hostels and hotels, with all sorts of “western” bars and souvenir shops. The main streets look like you are next to a really impressive tourist attraction, with all of the street merchants and merchandise, only that the tourist attraction here is not a temple or any other nice building but the landscape.

The whole countryside is full of weird round mountains called karst peaks. It is totally surreal, especially on misty days like today. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

After our breakfast we took the bus to a famous tree that looks like this:

The tree is more than 1000 years old, and really really impressive. It looks like the branches have grown too heavy, so that various “assistant” trees have been planted and merged with the original tree. This looks really weird, somehow the added trunks make the tree look very alive and very… organic. Almost like an entity from a fantasy story. I can’t put it any better, maybe the pictures can convey what I try to say.

On our way there we met a nice Chinese guy who joined us for the day. On the other side of the river was a mountain that we wanted to see from up close, but there was no bridge to be seen, just a “road” through the river. This was like a dam where the river was only 5 cm deep, albeit flowing with a strong current.

We actually saw various things crossing the river there, and it was hilarious to watch.

Especially this fancy fellow.

I decided to cross the river on another funny crossing, and man, the water was cold!

The others found a bridge some 800 meters further downstream… From the other side the view was really nice as well, and we found this special rock there:

Rebeka and I decided to give the road a try on our way back, and it was FUN. It really was.

Icy at first, but after that it felt just great to stand in the middle of the river, with stunning surroundings and stunned observers because two foreigners were not paying the boats or hitching a ride through the water.

Later we walked on to one of the most famous hills in Yangshuo, the Moon Hill. Quite easy to see why it is called like that, isn’t it?

So we went on our way to the “step to the moon”…

…and got closer and closer.

We climbed up until we were standing right underneath the arch and from there further up to the top, from where we had a wonderful view (into the mist). We could barely see any other hills, quite disappointing. It wasn’t that bad though, since we had already lowered our expectations, and the mist made the view quite spectacular in it’s own right.

The way up there was very slippery, and the way back took us three times as long as our climb up, but we made it back (almost) without scratches (and with only one muddy bottom).

As extra bonus, we did our best to avoid any vanity:

When we came back, we found a place specialised in various masks. A great sight!

Although we were pretty exhausted, we couldn’t help but smile at the sight of this sign. Since Yangshuo is usually overrun by backpackers, hostels and bars advertise with being featured in the Lonely Planet. This one does it a bit different, though.

It was a great day, I am looking forward to tomorrow. We might take a boat trip, I’ll keep you all posted.