Donna will post her own account of this trip when she can, but just know she and Sam had an adventurous (read long, lost?, but fun) bike trip to see the river and areas around Yangshuo.
As she told us via Skype (love that!)... Seems they left their hostel at 10:30 a.m. , thinking it would be about a 7 km trip, just a few hours -- they got back more than 6 hours later -- but they got back!
Long story short, they went through some amazing scenery, saw very interesting houses and people, made a new friend (a woman from Germany that they then rode with), had an expensive ($13 for 3 people!) lunch that included an entire chicken (feet and head and all...) and then when they reached their Dragon Bridge destination, chose to not go back on the bamboo boats because they were too much money. So they headed back to town, and after a few turns and trying to ask directions (Sam wished he knew as much Mandarin as he knows Cantonese -- maybe even more!) they managed to get back to their hostel safely -- but pretty tired and a little bruised!
This area is one of the most beautiful in China, or so many people say. The vertical karst mountains are green and a very unusual shape. They are surrounded by rice paddies and you see rural Chinese people in their daily activities. The Dragon Bridge Donna and Sam ended up at, on the Yulong River, is 500 years old and the largest free-standing stone arch bridge in China. Of course, what they really cared about was finding their way back to the city after they saw it!
That night they went to the light show, which was interesting, but not nearly as exciting as they had been led to believe.
To see pictures of the bike ride, more than are right here, go to:
and click on bike ride
and to see a video of the boat ride across the river, with the Chinese owner singing! -- it is picture #60 in the above album.
No comments:
Post a Comment