Got to Yangshuo yesterday after a long day of traveling. We completely lucked out getting off the bus and walking into the first hotel we saw. Funnily enough the hotel name is Fawlty Towers Hotel. The Hard Seat Cafe is right next door! lol The hotel came highly recommended from this website I had been looking up and luckily they had one double room left with its own bathrm for 20 yuan each...! yep thats about $US2.40 for the night. So the room has no air-con, the fact that it is somewhat below ground level makes it cool, though a little damp and musty! lol. It's a good room in a good location and Fiona and I were able to hang our washing all over the place.
Last night we roamed around the town and stumbled onto this road packed with stalls and cool shops. Despite my vow to not buy anything, the seal was quickly broken and 2 gorgeous dresses later, I have a package ready to send home already. Sux having no willpower. Fiona is no help either, she just keeps telling me how cheap it all is and I should buy up otherwise I will regret it. Of course she is right and tonight no doubt will be another shopping expedition.
We spent the day cycling around the countryside on our 10 yuan mountain bikes. So glad we chose the mountain bikes instead of the granny bikes bc the rocky roads were really bumpy!! The scenery was beautiful, in the beginning we had to stop every few hundred metres to take photos. Beautiful karsts rising every which way we looked, rice paddies, farmers pulling oxen. It was fantastic. We rode all the way to Moon Hill to hike up to the top and get a panoramic view of the town.Somehow we ended up meeting this guy called Chufu - of Chufu Water Caves! He discovered these 2 water caves (Black Buddha Water Cave, Chufu's Water Cave). As luck would have it, he discovered a new water cave, which he has named..."NEW WATER CAVE". We were enquiring about checking his old caves but he mentioned this new cave that only one other group of ppl have visited. It will take about 3-4 hours to go through the water cave, inside there will be wading through crystal clear waters, waterfalls, mud baths, lots of climbing up and down to go through the mountain and arrive at the other side. We don't really know much about this cave since no-one else has been through it (except for that one other group), he was pretty keen for us to try this one out and charged us a ridiculously low price [after some bargaining] of 50 yuan each. His normal charge is about 120yuan for his other caves, and he said this new cave is heaps better. Feel like such pioneers as we will only be the 2nd group of ppl to check it out. So tomorrow we will be meeting him and he will be conducting the tour himself. Pretty exciting stuff.
So after these negotiations, we continued cycling around rather aimlessly, trying to veer away from huge cow poo and big rumbling tour buses. We ended up on a little trail away from the main roads and cycled through that with the river Li on one side, gorgeous karsts rising on the other, rice paddies all around. Off to have some grapefruit stuffed with pork and maybe some beer fish (the local specialty). Signing out from Fawlty Towers Hotel, Yangshuo
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