Yangshuo and around

We're having a great time with Yangshuo as a base. Everything's pretty cheap and a lot of people speak a fair bit of English, so I don't even mind that feeling that we're still being constantly ripped off. Just not ruthless/stressed enough to make a decent attempt at bargaining I guess.
 
We did an overnight stay at Ping'an the day before yesterday. We got a bus transfer there, thankfully had an ipod to drown out the 'tour guide' (I couldn't work out what language she was speaking - Josh worked out after about 20 minutes that it was English!) and made a dash for freedom as soon as she got the little tour-guide flag and a loud-speaker out at Ping'an. Had a lovely time drinking beer with spectacular views.
 
The next day we walked through the rice-terraces, which was amazing. Would love to post up some pictures, but if you want an idea of what it was like, google 'longji rice terraces'. It's still pretty darn hot here, so we wisely did what the locals do, and got up at 5.30am. It was cool and misty, very atmospheric right up until the point where the heavens opened and drenched us in a storm! So the rest of the walk was done in squelchy shoes. If we'd have waited until a reasonable time then we probably would have been ok! But the walk was still great.
 
The buses back to Yangshuo get classified as 'an experience'. Bus 1: Never realised you could get 25 people in a 14-seater minibus... Fortunately we got there early so we had a seat, and didn't even have to share it with anyone. Bus 2: Love their idea of a connecting bus service - bus 1 was heading into town, bus 2 heading out on the same route, they just stop when they see each other. Was relieved to find a proper coach with air conditioning and everything, until they put on a particularly bad 5-minute long chinese-techno-pop song. On loop. For two hours. OMG I nearly went mad. Bus 3: No techno. No noise at all. Very, very relieved.
 
This morning we got a couple of bikes from Bike Asia (that's where Jamie used to work) and cycled up and down the Yulong river to Dragon's bridge, which apparently is very, very old. Well, actually we missed the last turn and spent 15 minutes being totally unimpressed by a pretty normal-looking bridge before realising our mistake. Actually, we missed quite a lot of turns, and maybe made a few that we weren't meant to, but generally had a great time - we just went along with karsts on one side and a river on the other, safe in the knowledge that there wasn't too much that could go wrong, and enjoyed the spectacular scenery. Most of the locals said hello to us as we cycled through lovely villages and past paddy fields, and every now and again one of them would try to sell us a trip back down the river on a bamboo raft by running after us shouting 'hello! hello! bamboo! bamboo!'.
 
Josh will disagree with me here I think, but I am promoting mountain biking to 'least comfortable way of travelling', even above camels. I think lots of beer is in order tonight to take my mind off my aching legs, knees and buttocks. Jamie, I honestly don't know how you do it.

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