... so on Saturday we hooked up with all the new people who had moved into our dorm over the last day and night: there was JuanPablo from Chile, Jitin from Indi
a and Emma from Beijing, so together we rented some mountainbikes and made our way out of the city... and into the pure nature... oh that was so nice! after a while we left Emma (sorry hun) and the main street and cycled on a rocky kinda country street... with huge-dust-cloud-causing-trucks-which-transport-the-bamboo-boats passing by (if you can see it on the pic, look at the 'motor'!!), and other than that only a few motor bikes etc.... again I felt like being thrown into the middle of some piece of art, this scenery is just so beautiful. After about 4 hours or so we arrived at Moon Hill, south of YangShuo. The hill is known for its shape, as it has a hole in - guess what - the shape of the moon, and thanks to the creativeness of Chinese it has such a great name now ;). We payed 1,5 € admission, including having our bikes "watched" :S and set off the 1251 steps (according to LP again - so nothin's for sure) up the hill... it was quite a climb, but with several stops we arrived, actually I had expected it to be harder. Well, we had arrived at the hole, so we were in the moon kind of. And the view was beautiful!
But then we went on... getting to kindof another rocky cliff from where we could see Moon Hill from its side... the view was even better... we took a little break and watched the free-climbers on the hill climb and fall... and just enjoyed the view... but could it get any nicer? oh yeah, and I am still amazed! After that stopp, we went on to climb ontop of Moon Hill, and with ONTOP I m
ean ontop, there was practically no single stone that was any higher than the one we were standing on. Unbelievable. And (god knows why) we were the only ones up there... Room 215 on top of the Moon... with a 360° view all around the area, weirdly shaped mountains and valleys with the river, streams ans towns inbetween... just gorgeous! It must have been the most gorgeous view ever! Definately one of the highlights of my time in Asia so far. Unfortunatly, we had to go back as long as there was a little light - obviously the rest of Yanghuos population had the same idea and so we hit the bikers rush hour kinda... but was fun.
In the ev
ening we had a good dinner alltogether, and also with our new roommate Lucile from France,... we tried the local specialty Pijiou Yu (Beer Fish)... but it sounds much better than it actually tastes, but luckily we had some other goood stuff... (yummy fried eggplant again :D etc. ) as well... ... while walking though town by the way, we met - again - our Chinese fellow from the boat! ... lateron we brought some 0,80cents beer bottles up to our room and had just a real good night! while us girls went sleeping around 2... the guys couldnt find an end and went out to find the last open bars... no problem that we had to get up at 6.. ;) oh yeah.. 6AM... urghhhh.... but we wanted to make our way to Ping'an in the mountains NORTH of Guilin that day... so that meant: bus from YangShuo to Guilin - 2 hours, bus from Guilin to LongShen - 3 hours and bus from LongSheng to Ping'an- another hour. so we arrived at 2 up there after a bumpy but funny ride with great view over the mountainous area with rice fields and smalltown life to watch. The area reminded, don't laugh, seriously a lot of the German Black Forrest... up in Ping'an we walked up *few* more steps as the town has no streets... and checked into 'countryside Cafe & Inn' a totally cute little wooden house, and if it
wasnt for the chinese style roof and the red lanterns hanging around, it could have seriously been in the Black Forest. Our room was totally made of raw wooden walls and ceiling... felt like Heidi in the mountain haha!! We took a break, had a good meal of which I still dont know what I ate (looked like small branches from a tree, but cooked and soft) and then hiked up to a viewpoint to enjoy the postcard like view over the rice teracces. Now this must have been the most beautiful view ever! (did I say that before ? hmmm) Next day was already time to leave... but even though we had enjoyed a good evening with a bottle of chinese red wine for Verena and me... we got up early to hike to another peak. The view was just as good as the day before. Up there we got some postcards to send around... and while writing them... guess who we met? oh yeah.. our Chinese shadow from the boat!
We stayed up there for a while and then made our way back to town - by the way did I mention that this town had no more than maybe 20 all wooden houses, no streets, thus no cars, just some donkeys? it was so idyllic... and felt like set back to some centuries ago... anyways, reality caught us when we got on the bus for the bumpy
ride down... then switched to another bus to take us to guilin. Well this bus misteriously should have taken about 4 hours. But even though we stopped several times to let people, ducks and chicken enter or leave and we stopped for about a half an hour because the motor broke down and driver/-mechanic-to-be had to fix it... we made it to Guilin within around 2,5 hours only... so we had more time there for some extra shopping. I got some chinese music and a new pyjama :D ... then we had to say our goodbyes to Verena - as she had to work tomorrow she was flying back home, and we hit the train, surely after buying some beer and snacks for the ride... ... entering the train... passing by the compartments (and of course our Chinese haunter) ....
... we arrived the next day - Tuesday - at 1 in Shenzhen... walked from the station to the border... where we met: oh no... not the Chinese guy!! but our friend JuanPablo.. yes its a small world... he had made it there by bus from YangShuo.
To enjoy being back in HongKong kind of Western civilisation we headed for the nearest McDonalds in Kowloon Tong.. and then made it home.
Seriously, this was, besides Beijing and Shanghai and Hangzhou and Anji and Hong Kong the best time in China so far!!
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