Yangshuo

Yangshuo was the perfect start to our time in mainland China.  I had been telling David that I'd love to go to a small town in China where we could enjoy the countryside, especially after two weeks in bustling Hong Kong.  Yangshuo fit the bill.  I was a bit surprised when I found out the "small town" actually has 300,000 people.  A bit larger than the small town I had in my mind, but I quickly learned that a small town in China is much larger than what we consider a small town in the States.

We spent three full days in Yangshuo and filled them with biking, hiking, and even some bamboo rafting.  Yangshuo is surrounded by beautiful karst mountains that seem to rise out of nowhere and tower overhead at unbelievable heights.  Between karst mountains everywhere you look and beautiful rice paddies, we were pretty blown away by the scenery.

A bike ride through the rice paddies

A hike to Moon Hill is a highlight of Yangshuo.  We hiked up several hundred steps to the first viewpoint, but kept joking that after Adam's Peak even a few hundred steps felt pretty simple and very quick in comparison!  On the advice of a few others at the first viewpoint, we ignored the sign telling us not to enter, and hiked all the way to the top of the crescent moon.  As nice as it was and as gorgeous as the views were I had this thought that kept creeping into my mind about a couple who had walked across a similar structure in Australia only to have the bridge collapse and get trapped on a rock in the ocean.  They were eventually rescued by a helicopter, but the thing was that if our rock collapsed there would be no rescue, we'd just be the front page of the paper the next day -- dumb tourists!  Anyway, we made it up, enjoyed the view, and made it back down all in one piece.  And the view was worth it!

Moon Hill

David getting some extra height at the top of Moon Hill

Bamboo rafting was fun!  Although we loved riding across the dams, our favorite part was that we were superstars for the morning.  We had pictures being taken of us left and right.  We certainly weren't the only tourists out on the river, but we were the only Western tourists.  We even had a few people bring their raft right up to ours and hop onto our raft for a picture.  The second time this happened I made sure we got a picture on our camera, too!

~Sara

Bamboo rafting on the Yulong River

We were superstars bamboo rafting on the Yulong River