Yangshuo

Beautiful Guilin
Guilin and its surroundings is known for being one of the most beautiful places in China. Thousands, maybe millions, of Chinese goes here every year to enjoy the nice weather, the beautiful Lijiang River (not to be mixed up with Lijiang city in Yunnan) and the scenic surroundings. Like the Yangtze River this area is often used as a theme in traditional Chinese paintings.

Following the Backpackers
Guilin is now known to be a real tourist trap and today many travelers seeks alternative destinations in this area. And so was I, going where all the other backpackers where going...to Yangshuo and the banana pancakes.

Mountains over the ricefields

Tourists on bamboo rafts on the Yue Long He, the Moon Drake River. 
A collateral to Li Jiang River.

Yangshuo
Yangshuo, the backpackers paradise, is one hour south of Guilin on the riverside off Lijiang. It's a perfect place to chill out after being on the road for a while. In that way it's a similar place to Lijiang in Yunnan. 

Chill out
Many tourists recharge their energy in Yangshuo before going down south to Vietnam or Laos or east to Yunnan. For me this was almost the end of my journey and I needed to settle down after being nearly two month on the road. I didn't rest to much though.

I had a nice double with TV and my own shower for 40 Yuan. I couldn't complain about that!

Tourists
As you can understand, this place is crowded with tourists, both Chinese and westerners. A lot of Chinese from the neighboring Guangdong (former known as Canton) Province comes here just for a weekend holiday. Other ordinary tourists maybe stay for a week. Life is easy here and it's easy to get stacked, thus, the backpackers usually stays here for a week or two. 

West Street
West Street is the place where all the tourists meet. Most of the restaurants and hotels are placed around this street. And all  the souvenir vendors of course. Today West Street is so crowded that they have been forced to invent a "New" West Street.

International Food
Anyway, you can have American breakfast, Swedish vodka, English beer, Italian pizza or just a ordinary steak. Not to forget coffee, which you almost don't get any where else in China. And of course, the prices also are western style. 

Boring Food
I don't really like this. What's the point in traveling halfway round the world to eat breakfast from your home country. Stupid, isn't it? Besides those crossover restaurants is not really good at making either Chinese or western food.

Old west street...

...and the new west street

Bring Your Own Water
To get up to the top is a 20 minute walk up the stairs on the slope. Not to heavy, but as it is quite warm you probably need to drink a lot when you reach the top. The vendors knows this, so if you don't buy water from them at the ground level they simply follows you to the top. And the price increase according to the altitude. I'll just tell you.

It's a nice view from the top of the Moon Hill. 
The countryside and the mountains is disappearing in the haze.

Biking
It's easy to bike around as it is not very hilly. There are beautiful scenery with vast green and yellow fields, dramatic hills popping up like mushrooms on the ground and you see the horizon disappearing in the haze.

Make sure you got a good bike though, as the smaller roads are not paved and perhaps you end up on just small paths between the fields.

Moon Drake River
West of the city is a small river, the Yue Long He, the Moon Drake River. It' possible to bike along the river side criss crossing between the rice fields and the small farmer villages.  

Rice, Rice, Rice.

Rice fields mixed with sugar canes south of Yangshuo.

Here you find a spectacular hilly landscape with peaks of 800 meters. The slopes are all perfectly cut out in terraces an from a distance it really looks like the back of a snake, hence the name. 

On the top of the hill is a natural spring supporting the terrace with water. The chili grows on the top of the hill.

Minority Groups
It's a area of minority people living here, like the Yao, Dong, Zhuang and Miao. Until recently it was a very poor area, but today the farmer villages makes big money on tourists coming to see the rice fields. And now the villages are growing and you see a lot of new buildings. Hope they don't forget how to grow their crops.

Strong Womens
The small Yao women weight around 45 kilos but can carry 60 kilos of grain. Until recently they had to walk for a day to get to the local market and sell their rice. Now they have the broad tourist road that takes them to the market in just a hour. Life is getting easier.

A Changing Scenery
They only has one harvest a year here in the mountain. Down in Yangshuo they have at least two harvests. The scenery here changes according to the seasons. In the winter it's all white, covered in snow. In the springtime it's all drowned in water, reflecting the color off the sky, and in early autumn the rice are shining in a bright yellow color. At the time for my visit, in late October, the crops was already harvested, leaving just the brown soil on the ground. Not the best time to visit.