After a night at a hot spring resort we moved onto Yangshuo. The resort was really a weary travelors paradise but I think it fits Yangshuo too. It's also a tourists paradise. And guess what? That part didn't even drive me insane!
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Group shot at Moon Hill, I'm standing on a rock since I hate being 5'2 in all my pics
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After a early afternoon/night/morn-ing lounging around and being pampered in the hot springs we drove to Yangshuo. This town is very similiar to Lijiang and Dali in Yunnan, but I think I liked Yangshuo better. It's hard to tell because its the most recent memory. Really good, cheap western food. Lots of decent happy hour along with western bartenders willing to make strong drinks (after happy hour), lots of shops with some unique goodies, mountain climbing, biking, caving and mud bathing. What else can you ask for in a town?
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| Favourite spots: |
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Climbing boys. They like to hike and climb like monkeys
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Hot Spring Resort: a few hours from Yangshuo but worth the ride and the steep price of the room. Not very good food but that is okay since it has hot springs. Who needs food when you have hot springs and alcohol? Moon Hill: Mountain biked to this hill, hiked to the top with vendors trailing and fanning us off, then biked to this water cave. Caved into this slightly wild cave until we reached a mud bath where we played like little children. Imagine, 20 something year old girls in bikinis and hard hats crawling through a cave then mud bathing. It wasn't all that comfortable for us girls, before and after the mud bath but the inbetween playing part was well worth the trouble. Cooking & Rafting: When rafiting along the Yulong River and had a cooking class where we learned to make four traditional chinese dishes. Kayaking & Fan Factory: I didn't do this option but apparently it was really fun. Although, the river is very tame which makes it much harder to kayak.
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| What's really great: |
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I loved the little western part of town that we stayed in and the mud cave. I mean, how can you not like floating and playing in mud? The downside was that it was a messy cave so we had to wear our swim suits and hard hats plus plastic shower shoes they provided that didn't fit well that led to a little bit of dangerous caving. Especially after we were all slick with mud. Once we crawled (almost literally) our way out of the cave we had to hike for 20 minutes to where we were rinse off under running cave water. It was pretty sweet. The food at the little western/chinese combo style restaurants that littered the town was fantastic. Cheap, quick and delicious in its western goodness.
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| Sights: |
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Woman in Village picking fruit
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Moon Hill (good for hiking, look into mountain climbing in the city if you are an experienced climber)
Yulong River Cruise- not bad, we took the cruise and explored a little town that they told us was named London. Weird.
Cooking Class/Rafting- great fun.
Kayaking/Fan Factory- great fun plus cheap fans and scroll paintings.
Cormorant Fishing Show- touristy show about their traditional fishing style.
Impression of Liusanjie- Show directed by Zhangyimo (Crouching tiger, house of flying daggers I think).
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| Accommodations: |
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President Clinton Visited, there were like shrines to him all over the village
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Central Hotel in Hotspring Resort
0773-7482888
Great hotel, very modern and glassed in showers (a rarity in Chinese hotels). Amazing hot springs. I highly highly recommend this little getaway.
Coco Hotel (0773)-8829188
Half of us, the boys, stayed here. Nice rooms, live music at night, and decent food plus free net.
Sihai Hotel 0773-8822013
Word on the street of TBC (my study/travel group) is that this hotel was much worse than Coco. The girls stayed here. I didn't think it was that bad.
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| Nightlife: |
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Not very many clubs in this little place, all bars and pubs that have live music after a certain hour or play music videos on the tv screen. Not so much rave/dance hardcore type clubs. Which is good. If you've ever seen Chinese dance clubs you'll understand that we don't need to encourage it... really, its okay if they don't build anymore of those.
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I really enjoyed the scenery on the lake.
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Lots of pubs, ever restaurant turns into a pub well... whenever you feel like its time to start drinking. For us, that can be kind of early in the day.
Local beer runs you about 6rmb, mixed drinks anywhere between 20-35rmb which is really cheap in comparison to the cities. Long island is the 35rmb side.
These is this bar called MC's Bar or somethng close, a canadian bartender who is EXCELLENT at making drinks. Made me a special fruity drink that I absolutely loved and the boys this drink called the South China Sea Breeze that was quite delicious and probably really potent. And, a few bijiu (rice wine) mixed drinks that were scary and intimidating. Plus, great shots. We did a few cocksucking cowboys and were happy campers.
Plus, they played really good music videos, all rap and some on the verge others definitely porn style. But, we danced and sang along anyway while the rest of the bar stared.
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| Restaurants: |
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Its apparently matches but I don't think I lined it up right.
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Lots of really good places. Everywhere has pretty much the same menu. There is a wood oven pizza place that is really good, very tasty. A place called Drifters that has excellent food and this apple crumble that I think every person in my group ate sometimes twice a day- baked in the oven and topped with vanilla ice cream. Oh man, it was hard to leave that apple crumble back in Yangshuo.
Generally lots of really good places to get both chinese and western food not that any of us would touch the chinese food once we had cheap western food at our disposal. Beijing lacks cheap western food.
No starbucks, but there was this little place called Sarpin coffee that I visited sometimes twice a day. Great great coffee, all kinds from everywhere. These ladies know coffee and I love them for it.
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The only down side to Yangshuo was that it was littered with non-chinese speaking western tourists. While, it was fun to finally speak with other native english speakers and meet other traveling foreigners it was really really frustrating when it came to shopping. The prices skyrocketed because they vendors had the advantage and it took twice as much work to get them down to decent prices- even then we felt we were still getting ripped off a lot.
Good leather products, but steep non-bargaining prices. I bought a sweet watch and a bad ass belt that I can't wait to wear. Some good clothes, especially the thai- style pants.
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Published on Saturday November 5th, 2005
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Publish on Facebook
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Sun, Oct 08 2006 - 07:53 AM
 by mrscanada
I enjoyed reading your review and the pictures were wonderful.
Oh dear I was one of the western tourists who went down the rivew.
Lyla |
Sun, Nov 06 2005 - 09:45 AM
by jorgesanchez
| Magnificent serie of reports about China |
Sat, Nov 05 2005 - 01:24 PM
by horourke
Great Report
Very well done |
Sat, Nov 05 2005 - 11:15 AM
by toribio
| I GIVE 5 POINS BECAUSE I LIKE |
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