Guilin
We flew from Lijiang to Guilin- on arriving to our hostel in Guilin we were blown away by the place. Our hostel had a beautiful floor top garden bar giving a 360 degree view of the city- intermixed between the buildings were large karst type mountains. We were exhausted arriving to Guilin but ended up having a great night as the hostel put on an outdoor movie- Boheminan Rhapsody- for us. It was awesome- CAN ANYBODY FIND MMEEEEEEEEE, SOMEBODY TOOOOOO… LOOOOOVVVVVEEEE!
Yangshuo
We booked a bamboo river boat tour through our hostel which would take us from Guilin and end in Yangshuo. The river trip was lovely, the bamboo boats have all been made of PVC-pipes (with a failed bamboo resemblance, ?painted blue for some reason) with little outboard motors on the back to withstand the strong currents on the river and I guess to make it more likely everyone gets there in one piece. It was good fun!
Yangshuo is a town with awesome karst scenery, beautiful mountains, rivers, caves, and temples as well as its laid back cafes and bars.
We stayed in a great hostel out of the main part of the city called Stone Bridge hostel.
The first evening there it rained like crazy, luckily for us it let up and we were able to bike into the town. Man we were shocked with what we found in town! When we arrived into Yangshou it seemed like quite a sleepy little town, but we found a very busy, loud, and bustling tourist centre of town. We tried lots of delicious foods here- spicy fried potatoes, spicy fried tofu, dumplings, extra large fries (imagine chips the size of a subway footlong sandwich, Chris couldn’t resist), Liquan beer (the local brew) enjoyed with some live music.
We spent the next day biking (on a push bike) around Yangshuo greater area- along the river, seeing the sights, going to the local park arcade and going on the bumper cars, and we went strawberry picking!–
The next day we went even further afield on an electric bike and were able to see more of the karst landscape that the area is famous for. We climbed to the top of one of the hills in town for a better look of the area:
Of note- we also tried Jack Fruit for the first time here- it was tasty. Like the flavour of a banana with a much much better texture. Would recommend.
Next we travel Huangshan mountains…
