Yangshuo - 21st November - 2nd December

Sadly, I've just left yangshuo... By far my favorite place in china and what actually turned out to be one if my favorite places in the world so far. I literally couldn't find a bad word to say about the place, people or hostel, I was genuinely upset to leave after settling more than comfortably into this new way of life and little make-do family, but Vietnam next and more importantly - beaches!
You need to see the pictures to begin to understand how beautiful yangshuo is, helped along by the near perfect weather we had almost every day, your always surrounded by a series of low mountains as far as the eye can see, rivers, lakes, farms and a beautifully traditional little town full of boutique shops, artists on the streets, fishermen wandering through, colorful local markets, brilliant live music bars and clubs and too many little restaurants to remember. After being in huge cuties for 7 weeks it was so nice to get out in the open, out of the smog and into the fresh air, on our first day there az and I rented bikes and cycled for nearly 50 km along the Li river, amongst water buffalos, through rice paddies and away into the mountains, we barely saw another person for hours except for an old Chinese guy sat at at the side of a river washing his clothes in it, We sat with him for a while conversing through hand signals and very broken Chinese then headed off in search of the 'dragon bridge'
Dragon bridge is a 600 year old stone bridge over the yulong river, one of the first things to be built when the small fishing village was first established, the walls lean inwards, steps rock and sides are crumbling but that didn't stop us jumping off the edge, into the river 10m below :) we hadn't managed to find the bridge on push bikes so returned a few days later with a load of people on mopeds, stripped to swimming shorts and bikinis and cracked on, much to the joy of the cheering locals and bamboo raft drivers passing underneath! Haha
We got mopeds out a couple of times, it was so nice to be able to just go and explore, be it with a load of people alongside or just me and Az, the feeling of cruising along the little paved roads curling through the mountains, by the rivers and taking them off road down tiny cycle paths into orange plantations and farms was unbelievable and the nicest thing - our biggest worry was finding somewhere good to watch the sun set... Things are done a bit differently in china, when renting a 125cc bike we just walked in, pointed at the ones we wanted, paid £6 for the day and were told to be back for 7pm, no deposit, license or even ID shown! Mad!
It was pretty much our hostel that made our time there so good, we stayed in monkey jane's guesthouse on west street and it was absolutely amazing. The deco is old and rooms ok, but it's just one big party, after a couple of hours you couldn't care less about the deco or rooms, in fact I learnt to love it, the roof top bar is where too many hours were spent, be it in the day when we couldn't be bothered to do anything else so just laid on the sofas smoking shisha and watching DVDs, or every single night when it played host to massive parties and beer pong championships. I never managed to make it to bed before 6am for the whole 11 days I was there it was crazy, there's always loads of people on it and our little crew always kept the party going! Every night started with a mass game of cards, 10 of us, monkey Jane and a couple of her friends would play for snake shots (the loser has to do one) that come from a huge jar containing an unidentified alcoholic liquid and 3 or 4 5ft long snakes. (one of which I bit the head off of whilst very drunk!) after cards came beer pong, and yes I am now the proud owner if a 'beer pong champion' t shirt, that would commence as would the music dancing and banter, coupled with westerners my Dj skills, a roof top terrace and copious amounts of liquan beer equals a very good night! It happened to be monkey jane's birthday whilst we were there so we decorated the bar, got a cake and all ate dinner together before a mental night that I'll probably leave out of this blog.... :)
What made our stay so nice was just getting up to beautiful scenery and weather, whenever you like, pottering downstairs (from our private twin room with en-suite that cost us £3 each per night!) seeing who's about, who's up to what, getting sone breakfast then just going with the flow! Yangshuo is fast becoming the best destination is Asia for rock climbing so obviously we had to give it a go, after cycling into the middle of nowhere with our guide we found ourselves facing the best climbing walls I've ever seen, loads of bolted routes between 35 and 40 meters high and set in the most amazing surroundings, the base being completely shaded by bamboo growing and from the top you could just see mountains lakes rivers and rice paddies, perfect! It was such a good days climbing, it was boiling hot and I was swearing like no-ones business but didn't care and just tucked into some oranges the guy had just picked from a nearby tree and rested.
The director of 'Avatar' said that it was this province in china that provided him with the inspiration for the floating mountains in the film and from the top of one if the mountains it's easy to see why, on a misty morning the cloud hangs low over the peaks and on a clear day you can see peaks and rivers for miles in every direction (specially when you climb to the top of a rusty disused radio mast on top of the peak of bailian mountain!) hehe
What a way to end 8 weeks in china, I do feel like we managed to get stuck in and saw just about every part of this fascinating nation possible, the richest parts to the poorest, picked up the language, adopted their life styles and ate their food and I can honestly speak for myself and for Aaron when saying that we loved every single minute of it!