South for the Winter
Posted: November 21st, 2012 by Scott
Winter was catching up with us in the North of China so we decided it was a good time to head further south to try to warm up a bit. So we packed our bags, jumped on another high speed train from Suzhou back to Shanghai to fly out.
These trains look and go pretty fast. Super comfortable too.
All our resources said November was the perfect time to visit the area around Guilin as this is the dry-season. Hmm, maybe somebody forgot to tell the weather that. We arrived to rain, more rain and a bit more rain.
We stayed one night in Guilin, which is another big city, but has some lakes and rivers dividing it into a series of sections which makes for some good photos.
These temples were just across the lake from our hotel.
We took the bus out to Yangshuo where we would stay for the next 5 nights. Our hotel was surrounded by beautiful karsts and rice paddies.
This was the view from our hotel balcony.
As the weather outlook was bleak, when we saw that our second day was going to stay dry or at least drier than the next few, we jumped at the chance to take some of the bikes our hotel has for use and ride up along the Yulong river to explore the area. We hired a guide for the day to show us around and make sure we didn’t get lost. She was really nice and also was arranged for our bikes to get picked up and driven down river so that we could ride down the river on a bamboo raft.
This was a really peaceful way to go down the river. Kinda like taking a gondola in Venice, but no singing.
The next day rained, and rained, and rained some more. We just curled up by the fire in the hotel, had a great Chinese massage and were treated to a traditional tea ceremony where we learned about Chinese teas.
Our tea hostess, it was chilly that day!
The next day we took a cooking class to learn how to make some Chinese food! We had the chance to make a few dishes including stir fried eggplant, steamed dumplings, kung pow chicken and a local delicacy “beer fish”.
My delicious but average looking dumplings.
After the cooking we explored the town of Yangshuo, since we hadn’t seen anything except the bus station when we arrived and our hotel was about 5k outside of town.
A very touristy city, but picturesque with the karsts surrounding it.
Yangshuo was a real highlight of our time in China. While we enjoyed the big cities, it was really nice to get out and get some fresh air for a change.