World Photos by Paola: Yangshuo, China

Friday, July 10, 2015

Yangshuo, China

This is kind of a tbt but done on a Friday. Recently, my screen saver started showing pictures from our 2007 trip to South East Asia. In that slideshow were the pictures from Yangshuo, China, an awesome and tiny town nestled in the middle of amazing and gigantic karst formations. Those are the formations that are usually depicted in traditional Chinese watercolor art, and this area of China is seen as one of the most beautiful in the country.

We didn't know all of this when we visited the town. Our main reason to visit the town was making a stop in China in order to get to Vietnam from Hong Kong in the most cost-efficient way. So, after taking a train from HK to mainland China, we jumped on a bus to the city of Guilin (where we thought we wanted to go!) but we were woken up by a man at 4 a.m. when we reached Yangshou, and we were told this was the town we really wanted to visit. We did as we were told (the adventure of traveling and trusting people, right?) and we got off the bus in Yangshuo. It was dark and we just started walking, looking for a place to stay. Of course, at that time, everything was closed (did I mentioned we arrived there on Christmas Day?!)!

As soon as it got light enough outside to see the scenery around us, we saw the beautiful and gigantic karst that surrounded the town. After we found a place to stay and took a warm shower, we spent the next 3 days or so exploring the town and biking around the area. What a wonderful and peaceful place to explore. We had no map but still managed to bike all over the place and hike about 25 km along the Li River without much trouble.

Here are some pictures. They are almost 10 years old, taken with a very old and not fancy camera, but I think they do capture a bit of the essence of the place!