After a 22 hour train journey from Kunming on a hard seat (as on booking no beds were available), we were looking pretty bedraggled and in need of a bed. Not quite there yet though we arrived in Guillin and had to find the local bus to Yangshuo. We found it eventually and arrived finally after 1 more hour. Checked in to our hostel and slept!
The next few days we spent exploring Yangshuo and recovering! Parts of this town are extremely touristy (but only with Chinese tourists) so it didn't make too much difference to us. Yangshuo's scenery was unbelievable, the whole town has developed around its karst landscape, surrounding and towering above you, it's very dramatic.
We stayed in Flowers Youth hostel sharing a dorm with 4 Chinese travellers who all wanted to constantly keep practicing their English on us! We spent a lot of time in the common room trying to get a break from them, but they eventually found us in there too! We became very friendly with one guy called Neek -he was so funny without realising, and spent the day with us shopping and eating rice noodles, he was great! We will certainly miss him and his jokes! He was amazing!
Our last day was spent doing a lot of walking. First we climbed the view point at Yangshuo - looking down on to the whole town we got some great photos, then we hired some bikes and biked it to The Big Bayan Tree which really wasn't that big and lastly climbed Moon Hill. Famous for its moon shaped hole once at the top the views of the surrounding countryside were crazy, just mind blowing. We had had a great day but were shattered by the end of it.
We decided to spend our last night in Yangshuo watching The Impressions Liu Sanjie Show, directed by the man who put together the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics. Six hundred performers took to the Li River in front of us, surrounded by karst peaks that illuminate along to live music, it really was an amazing show and we saw some beautiful acts. It was definitely my favourite thing we had seen throughout our stay here. Jumping on an 8 hour night bus later to take us to Shenzen.