Monday, March 31, 2008

Yangshuo, China

We spent last weekend in a small town called Yangshuo, southwest of Shanghai.
More well known may be the city of Guilin which hosts the areas main airport and is approx. a 1.5 hour taxi ride away from Yangshuo. The entire area is known for it's amazing landscape - seriously, just beautiful! - it's covered with mountainous karsts, which are limestone "mountains" and are just amazing to look at. Yangshuo area is still pretty low-key, there are quite a few Chinese tourists that go to see the karsts as well as a very well known light show called "Liu Sanjie" - for more info click here - that is performed on the Li River (yes, literally on the river.)

Other than the light show, most people go for the outdoors activities in the area like; Rock Climbing, Hiking, Biking, Hot Air Ballooning, Cave Tours, and probably the most common Bamboo Rafting. You'd probably need at least 3-4 days to do and see everything, but if you're just looking for a weekend trip out of Shanghai for some fresh air 2 days is fine. We stayed at a fantastic little hotel outside of "downtown". It's called the Li River Retreat and is set up on a hillside overlooking the river. Fabulous place!

Some photos we took are below - some are from on the ground and others are from the Hot Air Balloon ride we took which was an all together amazing experience just on it's own.

**I'm having problems loading pictures...I'll post more later...sorry!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I visited Yangshuo planning to stay a few days.. ended up staying a few weeks in 2005. You mentioned some great stuff to do there, it's also a great place to do nothing. I can't wait to get back there, drink the cafes dry then curl up and read a book on the river bank.

Anonymous said...

I loved that whole area and that show was wonderful. The bluest skies and cleanest river that I saw in China.

tuco said...

Hi your blog is great! Me and some friends are planing to visit China among other Asiatic lands backpaker-style. We want to write about our experiences and post pictures in a blog that friends and family may visit. I have however heard that some types of medias are cencored in China. I've heard among others things that blogger (which we would like to use to blog) was often blocked by the authorities. In that context how is your experience using blogger in china, would you recommend us to use this tool to blog in our travel through that country? Our goal with the blog is purely touristic, we have no intentions on publising "sensitive" or "political" informations.

Anonymous said...

Tuco
You will be able to publish your blog and your family can see it but you might not be able to see it yourself while you are in China.