We have taken our 1st day in Yangshuo nice and easy. We just made it down for breakfast about 9.40am and then went back to the room for some chill time.
Later on we walked about 5 miles down to the Yulong River bridge, taking in the sights. It's very beautiful here due to the huge and overbearing Karst mountains that provide such an impressive back drop whichever way you look. We ended up visiting a national park where 'The Old BanYan Tree' can be found. It is reputably the oldest tree in china and the labels pinned to it (6 red ones) suggest that it's 1800 years old! That sounds a bit far fetched to me but even so, it's a very cool and huge tree, much bigger than the major oak in Sherwood, so you never know?
In the evening we went down to 'west street' for tea. This is the neon lined pedestriansed tourist street of Yangshuo with all the street maket stalls, bars, restaurants and shops. It's mega busy every night.
Karrons still not quite got the hang of ordering so once again we ended up with more than we could eat - 1 main, 1 rice, 1 noodle - between the two us it was still to much. Tonight we tried a local speciality, Yang Zhou Rice. It's very much like home brewed special fried rice but tastier.
Walking down west street we were, as normal, approached by many traders shouting their 'hello' s to us. We picked up a few trinkets to take home as the street market was one of the best we've seen so far. West street is very lively with many restaurants and bars catering for all sorts of different ages. If we were 10 years younger, I'm sure we would've spent some late night time in the chinese bars here - some are like mini night clubs playing very loud western dance music and drawing peoplevin with offers of free or cheap beer. Yangshuo, on West Street, it's definatley a party town if you'd like it to be.
With full bellys and empty pockets, we went back to the hotel to get a cup a tea instead :)