22nd April – Yangshuo

So our first full day in Yangshuo and since the town is really just a tourist mecca we decide to mish out and see the countryside. So since i'm (we're?) not really fond of tour-de-france-type sightseeing we rent the only motorised thing a non-resident can drive – an electric scooter. It has a battery meter and everything, we also discover (once it starts to go a bit slow...it kinda starts dying like a torch battery..) that you can “charge it up” by not accelerating downhill, tho then you crawl a snails pace so its not like its really a viable option for the most part. it starts to rain and den being the driver gets this reat rain coat that covers the front of the bike and then goes over your head...means your hands etc are dry too. It has a nice lil cap too...with this on PLUS the bright orange helmet he is wearing, well he looks every part the dorky tourist and surprisingly neither the raincoat OR the dorky helmet last very long :P Anyways we head south and pass through a village embracing the tourist money and the starting point for one of the caving trips. den was most intrigued about these caving trips cos all the photos we had seen seemed to be bikini-clad young women covered in mud...
Anyways we find a dirt track and take that...right past the local dump! Nice but things pick up after that and we get some magnificent scenery of the karst hills wiyth rice paddies and lil villages, So beautiful i think this is one of my fav parts of china. Its like you see in pictures...or better! so my expectations are fulfilled and more. theres a big karst hill round here which is “famous” as it has a semi-circle hole in it, its called moon hill and the saying is that it looks like different phases of the moon depending on where you it from.
We headed south to find the like 5000 y/o banyan tree, took us a wee while but we should hve just spotted the tourist buses! tree itself was amazing, of a lot f the brqanches it had grown more trunks as to maintain holding its growing weight. however the place was SOOO touristy (for chinese tourists realy) and full of touts and worst of all, things like dancing dressed up monkeys, which just made me furious and worst part is all the chinese taking pictures and thinking its so cute. makes me sick. So we didn't stick around and decided to head back into the countryside again, this time on a more tourist track through the karst hills. Awesome scenery again, jsut winding through these blobs on the countryside and watching people tend their rice fields here and there. Tho...then the lil scooter slooooooowly starts to die. We get a few good down hills and "charge" it up a bit but it soon gets to the point where arn gets off and walks as it is going so slowly with 2 people! So i walk to town while den rides (don't worry he WAS a gentlemen and offered for me to ride it, but lets just say arn is not much of a scooter driver..!). Den actually makes it into town, but only just. What a fab day, one of my fav in china...or even the whole trip. SO wonderful to be out in the countryside and peaceful too! nice "western" dinner too :P