After we visited the terrace farming village, we took a boat down the Lijiang River to Yangshuo, which is a kind of haven for backpackers and weary types from all over. It’s a lot more laid-back than Guilin, mostly because it’s smaller, and the main industry is tourism. And if by laid-back you mean people trying to sell you stuff at every turn. But that’s sort of par for the course to us by now, so it’s eyes ahead at a swift pace, muttering ‘bu yao’ until we can get out of the narrow street that they funnel us into as we get off the boats that took us down the river.

We didn’t know any better, so we booked a trip down the river from our hostel, and were herded onto one of more than a dozen cruise boats that were all tied together at the tourist docks. If we would have had more time, it would have been better to take a bus down to Yangshuo, only a two hour ride, and cast about until we found someone to take us upriver on one of their bamboo rafts. That looked like a lot more fun. But, as it was, we were stuck in a line of boats, loaded up with both Chinese and Western tourists, and we floated on down the river.

The scenery was pretty amazing, and I’m afraid our point-and-click digital camera just didn’t do it justice. You can check out a few I’ve uploaded to our gallery. One of the fun parts of the boat trip was watching the men on bamboo rafts set an intersect course with the tour boats, grab on to the lower deck, and commence with the hawking.

After Yangshuo, we took the slow train to Shanghai, which I’ll write about soon. Only two weeks ’til we get home, and we’re really excited about seeing Tibet next week. More about that to come.

Check them out here.

On Friday we went on an organized tour to a village up in the mountains outside of Guilin where they farm on terraces on the side of the mountains. It was pretty spectacular. Neither of us is really excited about tourist-y stuff, but without staying in the area for a couple of weeks, it’s kind of hard to get to some of these things without joining up with a tour.

We rode the bus from Guilin out into the countryside and up into the mountains. Guilin is approximately 150 meters above sea level, and the Longji terraces are at 900 meters, so we had some windy roads to navigate. Anyone who’s been on a bus outside of North America or Europe can probably relate to this, but riding on rural buses in China is an experience. In Guangzhou, I was constantly impressed/disconcerted by the driving skills displayed by the taxi drivers, but the 2 bus drivers we encountered around Guilin take the cake so far. Either they don’t make buses the same in the US, or the fear of lawsuits keeps the drivers from really seeing what their machines can do, but I didn’t realize how well an eight meter long vehicle could corner.

Anyhow, after a 2 hour bus ride, we arrived at a village in a river valley where we were offered the privilege of seeing the longest hair in the world for the bargain entry fee of 60 yuan. Maybe some background is in order here.

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We arrived in Shanghai last night after a 25 hour train trip from Guilin. It’s finally a temperature that we’re used to expecting in December. It’s about 11 degrees Celsius here, which seems really cold to us after living in Guangzhou, where it never got below 18 before we left. So we’ve hauled out the long johns and scarfs and are quite enjoying the feeling of being bundled up once again.

When we left GZ, we took an overnight train to Guilin, which is in Guanxi province just to the north of Guangdong province. Guanxi province shares a border with Vietnam, so the signs were sometimes in English, Chinese and Vietnamese. The first day we rented bikes and rode around Guilin, which was a fun adventure. All the main streets have a wide bicycle/scooter lane seperated from the main traffic by a median, and all manner of bikes, electric and gas scooters and motorcycles travel down them, mostly in the same direction.

We climbed a couple of the karst peaks that jut up in the middle of town, and got a good view of the surrounding city and countryside. Getting out of the concrete jungle comprised by Guangzhou and surrounding areas was really nice. We even got to eat our lunch sitting next to the Li River, which, although still polluted, was green, not brown like the Pearl River. What’s more, there were fish jumping in it! I got a little carried away taking pictures of relatively unimpressive things like plants and the river, until I realized that it wasn’t really anything special unless you’ve been living in a city for four months. I guess I’m really a country boy at heart.

Check out some of our pictures from Guilin and if you haven’t already, check out other albums in our gallery

I created a little tour of our trip with Google Earth, so download it and see where we’ve been and where we’re going. It’s just an overview, but you can get an idea of the vastness of China. Download this to check it out.