About a day's train journey to the East from Yunnan, we encountered much warmer weather near Guilin. We arranged a funky little boat to carry us down the Li River from Guilin to Xingping, then hitched a ride on something similar to a golf cart to finally reach Yangshuo. We considered staying within the small city - but decided instead to head to the boonies to stay at a unique guesthouse called The Giggling Tree. It turned out to be a great decision as the next few days turned out quite spectacular - smack in the middle of picturesque karst mountains. We borrowed bikes and pedaled most of the day through rice fields, then hired bamboo rafts to float us back downriver to the guesthouse - one of my favorite experiences in China. Dus and I awoke one morning well before sunrise in order to hire a hot-air balloon to float us a few thousand feet above the valley below. I snapped off over 350 photos during the hour we were in the air.
Dustin's version of events:
one of the most beautiful landscapes we saw in china was in yangshuo. we rode down the li river on a bamboo boat between tall limestone pillars, overgrown with shrubbery. and we saw amazing views from a hot air balloon at sunrise. we even noticed some cracks in the floor of the balloon basket we were standing in; but it seemed to carry scott, myself, and the navigator just fine, 3651 feet above the ground.
another fabulous site was the rice terraced fields of longshen. crowds of chinese and foreigners visit this site to view the progressive phases in the cultivation of this staple food. stairs lead through a large village to the top of the hills where you can see rice growing for miles; green for another couple weeks. my favorite part of this village was the hot peppers drying under the sun in piles near the sidewalk. it felt like walking through a spicy paradise.
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