Longi Rice Terraces

I had chosen to take a day tour from Guilin to the rice terraces in the mountains. I was a little bit concerned that I might be the only one going when nobody was around when the tour guide was supposed to come and collect me, but I need not have worried. A French couple joined me from the hostel and then we joined a whole bus load of Chinese! I had imagined a little minibus from the hostel, but we had a 50 seater coach.

The drive to the terraces was awesome. The scenery changed from flat plains with Karst peaks popping up around us, to long deep valleys with forest and rice fields squeezed into the hillside. Then we reached the end of the valley and changed to a couple of smaller busses. The road wound up into the mountains, with the side of the road just falling away to nothing.

We had a good view of the fields from the starting point low down, then we walked up into the village of three story wooden houses crowded almost on top of one another. The animals live underneath the main house and the rice is stored in the eaves. We had excellent food cooked with, or in, the locally abundant bamboo. Unfortunately, we were then in the clouds and saw little else :-( It was definately worth going, but a real shame that the wather was so terrible.

On the way back we stopped at a ridiculous tourist attraction, where you take a bamboo boat a little way down the river passing rows of girls of varying 'minority'. It was so fake and so silly that I couldnt help but laugh out loud, as did the other English people with us on the boat. Then we were taken up a hill to visit more local people who put on some shows of dance etc. The views from the hill were good, and one of the shows was good and actually seemed to give a bit of an impression of the local culture, so it was not utterly pointless.

I enjoyed the journey back, while the others slept. The light was fading and the scenery became even more beautiful.

That evening I met a dutch room mate and went out for dinner with him. I was glad of the company and it made the evening pass easily. I went to bed looking forward to travelling to Yangshuo the next day.