So despite the fact that most people can’t remember a time that the international flights from the U.S. into Beijing were late, Doug’s flight came in 4 hours late on December 9th. As a result we only had one day to relax and hang out in Beijing before leaving for our planned travel. We had some cool dumb luck that it happened to be the first snow of the year that day, so we wandered about Houhai Lake for most of the morning around all the Hutongs (old courtyard house areas built ages ago). I took some great pictures of the iced over lake and snow everywhere, but as those are on the 35mm camera, can’t post them here.
Doug also had his first taste of really good hotpot. For those of you who’ve never had it, hot pot is a boiling pot of a broth (oil, white, spicy red, or two or more types, etc.), into which you dump a variety of meat and veggies and cook yourself then dip in yummy sauces (my personal favorite is the sesame). I’m convinced that I need to find a great recipe for hotpot and open a chain of restaurants in the states…it’s one of the best foods ever for a cold day/night.
Guilin (http://wikitravel.org/en/Guilin):
On Tuesday we took off for Guilin, Guanxi Province. Guilin is supposed to be beautiful with a lot of parks, karst peaks, etc. However, we landed in a haze of smoke from them burning off the rice after the harvest, and frankly the city was overrun by businesses catering to tourists, and prices were ridiculous. We did manage to find some excellent Pijiu Yu (Beer Fish), a local specialty, and it was absolutely delicious, eaten in a restaurant where we were the only white people.
But in the end we were very happy to hop in a car and head down to Yangshuo at 9am on Wednesday morning. Yangshuo (http://wikitravel.org/en/Yangshuo):
We arrived in Yangshuo through a cool car drive out of the haze and into the mist. We had wanted to take the boat ride down the Li River, which is apparently THE thing to do, but the river is exceptionally low right now, and no boats can get through, as you can see here:
We got dropped at our hotel, the Magnolia Hotel, a real splurge in town at RMB 220/night (http://www.yangshuoren.com/magnolia_en.htm). Then we proceeded to find a great dumpling place, Dynasty of Dumplings, right around the corner for some yummy food. Then we managed to rent a couple of nice bikes from the folks next door to the hotel (no deposit necessary since we were staying at the hotel) and got out of town.
We rode down the road, fighting trucks and tour buses, out to Yueliang Shan (Moon Hill). It was quite the hike uphill on about a million stairs…I swear…there were a million. But I have to say, despite the panting and pain in my mildly sprained hamstring (from my Badminton match with my tutor), it was more than worth it. Here are a couple of pictures from the top:
We could have done more, but frankly we were more interested in finding a place to stop and relax over a beer than anything else, so we parked ourselves on the main drag and had a beer:
That night we found ourselves at an expat-friendly resto-bar called Kelly’s Café. I broke down and had some good ol’ American food cause I couldn’t help myself. We woke up this morning to much colder, but much clearer weather. We were pretty sore from our hike yesterday, so we rented the bikes again and decided to head out to the Yulong River on side country roads. We ended up getting sidetracked to take a bamboo raft upriver as far as we could go before it dried out. It was gorgeous, practically uninhabited, and perfectly silent, a rarity in China to say the least. I could say more but I think the pictures from our bike ride and boat ride speak for themselves:
We have enjoyed Yangshuo greatly, I think largely because we came on off-season and there were practically no tourists in town. I can only imagine how crazy it gets here in the summer, and much of what we loved would be crowded with people, taking away from the relaxation we’ve had here.
Tomorrow we head off to Kunming, and Saturday we have a 5-hour bus ride from Kunming to Dali in Yunnan Province...
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