Travel Journal

Today was our last "travel" day of the trip - traveling from Lijiang in Yunnan province to Yangshuo in Guanxi province.

We awoke before the crack of dawn - and our poor innkeeper (sweet girl of about 25) woke up at 6:00 to give us a wake-up knock (no phone in the hotel room). The walk out of Old Town, Lijiang was sad - it was another blue sky day and the mountains were glowing with early morning sunrise light.

Our flights to Kunming and Guilin were uneventful - we were very glad we didn't spend too much time in Kunming or Guilin. We beat a straight path towards Yangshuo, a village about an hour southeast of Guilin. Yangshuo is famous for its "karst" topography - odd shaped rock (mini-mountains) formations that just stick straight up out of the ground. They are so beautiful and vertical. It was very misty and cloudy when we landed in Guilin and the clouds gave the karst formations a very surreal look. This is definitely how I imagined China to look. If there were a stereotypical picture of this country, this is what I would think of!

After a run-in with a rude hotel tout, we tried to orient ourselves in Yangshuo. Apparently, our orienteering skills are off because we took about a 2 mile tour of greater Yangshuo, through all the back alleys and side streets, looking for the area of town they call West Street - where the majority of hotels are. I am very glad we got lost - it gave us a glimpse of the daily life of this city and the outlying farmlife. It is so much fun to watch people pedaling bicycle carts full of produce and talking on their cell phone at the same time. We also passed many farmers with their oxen in the rice paddies, working on their crops.

After we found West Street, we managed to stumble upon a great hotel, fairly new, but clean and with an actual shower stall and toilet paper! Woohoo! We worked our way down West Street, found a cozy cafe with gelato for dessert after a great dinner. We only got about 6 hours of sleep last night due to our wandering around Old Town, shopping, and eating late, so tonight, we are headed to bed early! We hope to take in more karst formations tomorrow by bicycle!!