Asian backpacker

In the morning we took the express bus from Guilin to Yangshuo, it took us roughly an hour and half, no stops in between. You could already see a lot of limestone rocks and karst peaks along the way to Yangshuo. It’s also possible to go from Guilin to Yangshuo by boat but that would take you a whole day. We opted to take a boat cruise instead once we were in Yangshuo.

Yangshuo itself is a huge tourist city for both domestic and international tourists, that’s why I’ve booked us a room outside of the city, which was more secluded but also more quiet. The room was decorated in an old traditional Chinese style and the view from the room was quite amazing.

The only downside was that laundry was quite expensive and they charged you per piece so since we’re cheapskates, we didn’t wanna pay and decided to rinse our clothes ourselves and hang it in our room. I know it looks rather “ghetto” but HECK! When in China, do what the Chinese do! 😉

As expected from a tourist overrun city, the center is highly commercialized with souvenir shops, restaurants and vendors selling overpriced goods. When you see a McDonalds and KFC in a “small” river town you know that there’s gonna be tons of tourists around.

On the first day we explored the area a bit and stocked up on some water and snacks for our hotelroom. We checked out the prices for the restaurant and their local dishes. You can find more on the food in Yangshuo in a seperate post. Since the city itself wasn’t all too big, it didn’t take us long to walk all around and because it was still early in the evening and we didn’t want to go back yet, we decided to have a foot massage! Good idea since we have been walking for a quite a lot the last couple of days and our feet were feeling pretty tired. They put us in a room with 3 lounge chairs and started washing our feet and preparing a tea bath for our feet to soak in. Yes that’s right, Chinese people love tea so much they bath their feet in!

Anyway, we got an hour of foot massage and it was so refreshing afterwards. I felt rejuvenated and it was perfect timing as well. Just as we finished the night stall were set up so there was more things to see and buy before we headed back. On our last day there we had a couple of hours to spare and we didn’t feel like walking around in the sun and sweating a bunch since we had a long road ahead of us to get from Yangshuo through Guilin to Shenzhen. We decided to walk along the river bank and found a spot in the shade near the boats and watch the view from there and do some people spotting. Nothing too spectacular but it doesn’t need to be, just a serene place, nice view and great company! 🙂