Travels to the West

I have now finally reached the warmer climate of the west of China, two incredibly long train journeys: 22 hours from Hangzhou to Guilin, then 18 hours from Guilin to Kunming. This makes me realise just how vast China is, the change in scenery, in weather and the fact that after so long on trains we still haven't made it to the other side of the country to Beijing and Shanghai!

Hangzhou was fairly peaceful, hiring bikes and cycling around the West Lake with a number of stops off to visit parks, pagodas and pavillions. The bike system we used was similar to that in Paris where you have a card and then use that to take bicycles out of one stand and return the to another. This worked well until somehow Helen managed to stop hers from working (twice!) luckily it was quite nice to stroll around the town itself though. We even managed to get to the train station, which turned out to be half an hour further away than the one we originally believed we were leaving from, but we made it in time and the journey itself went well. It was quite relaxing spending a day on the train watching the sceery pass by the window.

In Guilin we went to see the tiered rice paddy fields in Longji, up in the mountains. It's amazing that they use nearly every available surface to cultivate food, and the mountains were covered with fields upon fields, each one fairly small due to the steep gradient of the slope they were on. We then headed down the Li River on a boat, sun shining it was even warm enough to take off a few layers! The scenery was even more stunning than Yangtze, with huge limestones pinnacles rising in the distance. I was surprised though when I looked down at the water as it was so shallow you could see the pebbles on the river bed, yet the boat coasted right over them. I also realise that I am clearly not as imaginative as Chinese scholars past, as going past the nine horse mural. where apparently nine horses are visible on the rock face, I found only two.

Staying in Yangshuo we rented bikes and headed out on a cycle tour of the surrounding area, passing up close to the limestone hills, and even exhausting ourselves by climbing one; moon hill. The town itself is fairly catered to tourists, and one of the roads, Xi Lu (west street) is a market, where I must admit I did end up spending a fair amount of time, but luckily not too much money.