Longji (16-18MAY)

Village of Ping'an, perched on the side of the terraced hillside. This was the second village we stayed in, after a day hike across the Longji Rice Terraces, and the sky had cleared just as we arrived, to give us a spectacular veiw of the valley. Small village where we stopped for a break during our day hike across the terraces. View of the valley partially cloaked in cloulds during our trek.

Serenading my new 'wife' during a traditional courting ceremony at the end of a presentation of folk song and dance.

Shops at the base of the village of Dazhaijust, at the beginning of our hike to our hotel, after eight hours on three different buses. Our hotel was on the ridgeline disappearing in the clouds in the background of the photo.

From Yangshuo we returned to Guilin, the hub of karst tourism, and then on to Longji. The weather was gloomy and gray, with rain showers and fog as we climbed into the mountains, but the lush landscape suggested that the rainy weather is common place. After our second bus journey of the day, we stopped at a small rest stop where we met our first group of women from the local Yao Tribe, which is famous for having the longest hair in the world. I would also contend that they are famous for their efforts to separate tourists from their Yuan. They were on us immediately, peddling all the local wares and post cards, and did not give up until we were pulling away in our final bus, where their last efforts to close a deal through the windows of the bus went un-rewarded. 

Our final bus ride brought us up a narrow, windy road without guardrails and sometimes only one lane for the bus traffic traveling at high speeds in both directions. The ride was a bit nerve racking for some, and we were all relieved when the bus pulled into a parking lot at the base of the village, which sprawled up the hillside into the low clouds. 

After about eight hours in three buses, we were more than happy to get out and hike the last few kilometers, even if it was trying to rain. Once we were off the bus, we almost had to wonder if the peddlers from the last stop had tailed us up the mountain, because their twin sisters where now trying to convince us that we would be better off paying them to carry our bags up the hill to our hotel, than carrying the bags ourselves. 

The importance of tourism in these areas was evident with the peddling, but became even clearer when we had to go through a ticket booth turnstile, like entering an amusement park, to get into the village. Since this was all part of my tour, I did not note the ‘price of admission’ for the village. After a short but steep hike up the terraced valley, we arrived at our hotel, which our guide had downplayed to be a spider-ridden dump. 

This was actually quite typical of Chinese culture and was a theme in our guides’ presentation of the trip throughout the journey. They tended to accentuate the negatives to allow guests to be pleasantly surprised, and/or disagree with compliments. Of course, due to the cultural differences, we were left needlessly dreading several stops along the trip, which actually turned out to be great experiences. 

The hotel was a warm timber structure with a large common area/dining area on the ground floor and rooms on the second and third levels. After getting settled in, we re-grouped for a dinner followed by a cultural show of local folk songs and dance. 

The women who put on the show, were part of the Yao tribe, like all the peddlers we had met on the way into the village, and began the show by bring out all the souvenirs they had to sale. The show did not begin until we had all had an opportunity to buy something, but it was an enjoyable show when it finally got underway. 

To close, the group of ladies performed a courting ceremony. The youngest woman in the group was blindfolded and placed in the middle of the room and the rest of the women joined the audience in a ring around the young woman. The bride to be, in the middle of the ring, was now supposed to select a groom from the ring of people circling her. This could prove challenging, since there were only three guys in the circle of about 20 people. So, when two of the woman’s cohorts slipped into the group on each side of me, I thought there was a pretty good chance I would end up the groom. 

 As suspected, she selected me as the groom, and we began a series of courting ceremonies to seal our ‘marriage.’ First we stood back to back and passed each other wedding gifts. Before the cultural show, I had purchased a small pouch to carry my ipod, which was the only thing I had to give as a gift. I bought a Snickers candy bar to put inside and passed it to my new wife. It turned out she had picked a similar pouch to give me, but since she didn’t have a Snickers bar, she gave me a pinch on the butt, when she handed me the gift. 

Next, we hooked arms and drank a shot of rice wine. I assume the wine was used to lubricate our larynx, since the final ceremony was to serenade one another with a love song. I went first, and sang ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling.’ I suppose it was a little early in our relationship for us to have lost the loving feeling, but it was the first song that came to mind. 

She then sang me a traditional love song, which I later learned went something like: I don’t care how you look, as long as you love me. So, maybe the relationship wasn’t starting on the best terms. In hindsight, I should have then took her by the arm and headed upstairs to see how the group would have reacted. 

Instead, we capped the evening’s cultural exchange by teaching the women the ‘Hooky Pokey,’ which everyone had fun doing. In the morning, we awoke to more rain, and our guide gave us the option of skipping the trek across the terraces ridgeline by taking a bus instead. However, after the wild ride up the mountain in the bus the day before, and the incredible rice terraces stretched out before us, we chose to hike it. 

Fortunately, the rain let up shortly after we began the trek, and by the end, the sun was even breaking through the clouds. The trek was well worth it, and gave us a taste of the grand scale of the terraced mountain. The terraces cover over 60 square kilometers and the ridgeline is terraced from the river in the valley below, at an elevation of 350 meters, up to an elevation of 850 meters. 

With the wet weather, we rarely got a glimpse across the valley, but by the time we made it to Ping’an, the second village we stayed in, the clouds and fog had cleared enough to give us an incredible view of a fraction of the terraced valley stretched out before us. Sadly, several people in the group left the rice terraces with food poisoning, so our long trip to Hong Kong was going to feel even longer for some.

Yanshuo (12-14 MAY)

Farmer returning from the fields



Bamboo rafts shuttling tourist down the river.



View of another hot air balloon, rising above the jagged terrain.

View of Yangshuo from the top of one of the karst columns in the middle of town. The top is accessible by a trail and staircase and is crowned with a small gazebo.

The spelunking crew covered in mud and on our way back to the main entrance of the cave we just finished exploring.

Yangshuo is an inviting little city tucked in the valleys between towering Karst peaks. It has been famous for its landscape for centuries and is now a backpacker’s haven with western influences, but it still maintains an authentic local flavor as well. It is a tourist town and caters to many outdoor activities in the jagged landscape that draws climbers, cavers, rafters and more. I was looking forward to escaping the crowds and high prices of the cities, but found myself spending even more money on the myriad of activities available.

We arrived late in the evening, after a 24-hour train journey from Shanghai, and had a group dinner and some drinks, before retiring long after the city was asleep. At dinner, we had a brush with fame when Christopher Doyle, a famous director/cinematographer from Australia, stopped in at the same restaurant. No one in the group recognized him, but in talking with him, we learned about his work and looked him up online later. He is the cinematographer for many films, to include Infernal Affairs, which Martin Scorcese later re-made as The Departed, but many people feel the original is much better. He also worked on the remake of Psycho and many other films, mostly in China.

Before turning in for the night, we went to Club 98, where we tried the Intrepid Shot. It was closing time but we talked the barkeep into staying open for one more shot for our group. The shot consists of Vodka, Baileys and a teaspoon of sugar to ‘help the medicine go down.’ The ingredients are basic but the process is a bit complicated with a splash of crazy. You begin by filling a shot glass with Vodka and a splash of Baileys. The shot is then lit on fire and the teaspoon of sugar is melted over the flame before being poured into the shot causing a larger red flame to flare up from the blue burn of alcohol. After you have recovered from the surprised shock and singed knuckle hair, the shot is extinguished, stirred and a spoonful is taken out to fill the bottom of an upturned shot glass. Finally, you take the shot and snort the spoonful off the bottom of the upturned glass. The post-shot reactions and contorted faces on all of the participants were priceless. A few of the foolish revelers would have even done another round, if the bartender had not kicked us out.

On day two, I woke up early and went to the park where you can climb to the top of one of the karst towers for a commanding view of the city tucked in between the jagged tree-clung cliffs. Initially, I was going to lay low for the day, in order to save some money, but by noon, I was looking for something to do and ended up joining some of the group on a mud-caving trip. Exploring the caves gives you a feel for the forces that created the landscape. Acidic water and rain have slowly eaten away the limestone terrain, producing caves that grow and collapse, which leaves the towers behind. The valleys created between the towers, continue to funnel water into the rivers and caves to continue speed the cycle of creation, or collapse, depending on how you look at it. The cave we toured was a great example because it was filled with water, which was slowly expanding the cave beneath our feet.

We began the tour by boat, which our guide towed into the cave along a guide rope, before we disembarked inside the cave. We then hiked through a mature section of cave, which was fairly dry until we worked our way down to the younger section of the cave, where we wallowed in a mud bath. After some mud slides, fights and posing for the camera, we hiked out along a underground stream. The stream led up to our exit, a sink hole basked in green glow from light reflected off the rich vegetation lining its walls. Back above ground, we had to hike back around the towers we just hiked through to get back to the main entrance. One of the girls was slipping out of her mud slicked sandals, so I offered to give her a piggy-back ride. After sliding out of them a couple more times, she took me up on the offer, but since we were both covered in mud, she slid off my back faster than she was sliding out of her sandals. In the end, she ended up hiking most of the way back barefoot, but I ran her shoes up to her so she could get down without cutting her feet open.

At five the next morning, I was up early again, but this time I was headed out for a sunrise hot air balloon ride. A few people did not make it for the early start, due to another late night, but those who rose early were rewarded with an awesome experience. The air was a little thick with morning fog, but the mist was almost an advantage since it gave depth and definition to the karst topography that stretched out to the horizon below like jagged rows of sharks teeth. Despite what I had heard about never feeling wind in a hot air balloon, since you are traveling with the wind, I actually did feel a breeze as we drifted between air currents. It was actually quite impressive to see how varied each of the balloons’ paths were as we each drifted in different directions as we settled into different air currents, above and between the terrain. Our balloon rose quickly and began to drift northwest across Yanshuo, but then dropped back down over the Li River and caught a new air current the took us south along the rivers path until we climbed again and continued west over the city. Meanwhile, three other balloons had continued northwest at a lower elevation, which allowed them to wind between the terrain following a road, making the route look almost intentional. The sun was actually fairly high in the morning sky before it burned through the clouds and haze, bathing the landscape in a soft orange glow.

Our balloon remained separated from the rest, so our guide was busily chatting on the radio to plot our pick up point, as we were watching the limited possibilities pass below us. He finally decided on a orange orchard on the side of hill. The hill was not too steep and the orange trees were quite short, so the spot was not too bad, however, the power lines along the western edge of the field did have me a little nervous. Since I live to type this, we obviously avoided the power lines and, despite being very happy about the flight, we were also happy to be back on solid ground.

In the afternoon we went out on a bamboo rafts on the Li River along the same stretch of karst landscape that is featured on the 20 Yuan note. The area was beautiful, but after two long days, and a hot air balloon ride, it was having a hard time winning our appreciation. For our last evening in Yangshuo, we moved out of the town and into a little village inn called The Outside Inn. Our guide had played the place off as a spider ridden dump, but I found it quite inviting, relaxing and nice diversion from the touristy streets of Yangshuo. Like the name suggests, the Inn was tucked into the lush forest between several towers of limestone, hidden from the main road by a couple farms and village homes. We spent our last day relaxing on the communal patio/dining hall of the Inn and taking a bike tour to soak in the amazing landscape one last time before heading for Longji.