Yangshou: June 17th-20th

We arrived in Guilin, located in the Guanxi Provence, via plane late night on Monday, the 16th. Tuesday morning, we took the bus to the small town of Yangshou, also in the Guangxi Provence. What’s unique about the Guangxi region are the limestone formations, which make all the cities and rural towns in the area beautiful. In Yangshou, there are 2 main streets and the Li River. One of the main streets is West Street, a touristy street that has a number of souvenir shops and restaurants. We rented a couple of 1-speed road bikes and spent the day riding around in the countryside. We trekked up 880 steps (phew!) to the top of Moon Hill where we took in spectacular views of limestone karsts and small villages. On our bike ride, we rode past many rice paddy fields, lotus flower plants, caves, lush green fields, farming villages, and the Li River.

In town, we took a bamboo raft ride up and down the Li River. We enjoyed the ride --the weather was favorable (finally!) and the scenery was beautiful. We mentioned how mainland China is very "bootlegged". In Yangshou, we noticed a crowd of locals outside of a "Nike" Store. Fake shoes were being sold (we didn't know for how much) but the price tag resembled prices you see in the States. The sad thing is that many of these locals probably don't know that these are fake Nikes and are being taken.
For dinner, we enjoyed beer fish, a specialty of Yangshou, and a variety of Sichuan dishes such as spicy Mapo tofu and braised eggplant.

We took the bus back into Guilin on the 19th and stayed a night in the city. Guilin isn't anything spectacular. Although there are beautiful limestone hills surrounding the city, the city itself is bleak, grey and polluted. But we had a great day anyways because it was Ben's 24th Birthday!!! We enjoyed a tasty and very spicy Sichuan dinner and not to mention the $0.25 beers!

Next stop, the Terracota Warriors in Xian!