Day 1
We had a nice dim sum breakfast in Guangzhou before taking the train to Yangshuo 陽朔.

Arrived in Yangshuo…

First stop upon arrival was to go to XinPing to ride up the river on a raft. The scenery was beautiful. Even though this is the off season for traveling, there were still a fairly big crowd on the lake. In China, they say that Guilin scenery is the best in the world, and that YangShuo’s is better than Guilin.
Rafting down the river is simply amazing, the water is clear and green as it reflects the mountains rising around it. The area is very clean, it was warm, but there was a beautiful breeze that kept us refreshed.

Guilin-Yangshuo Nine Horses Mountain 陽朔几馬画山

Seven Fairies Mountain 七仙女山

20 Yuan Mountain – 人民币二十元取景山

Freshly squeezed sugar cane water was so tasty. We paid 10 yuan (a little over $1 USD) where we got off the raft for a bottle of freshly squeezed sugar cane juice but realized that a block down the street, people were only selling the juice for 5 yuan per bottle. The moral of the story is that “do not rush to buy anything at first sight … 😂”. I have to admit that is a lesson that Kevan has been preaching for decades.

We checked into our friends’ friend boutique hotel in Yangshuo, beautiful place, fresh air, a great place to stroll around and for Kevan to do his morning run.

Dinner made by our host …

Day 2
First morning in Guilin, Yangshuo. I loved how beautiful the scenery and how incredibly fresh the morning air was! And what can be better than going for a walk with kevan and then Kevan continuing on with a run amidst this beautiful scenery!

We came across many interesting scenes during our walk…

Villagers are busy about their lives first thing in the morning …

At Jima Wharf preparing to get on a raft.

We went on a 1 hour river rafting ride late morning.
Our rafter (Mr Pan) was very friendly and skilled. He has two children, oldest is only 9. He told us that he could probably raft a few times a day during the busy season in the summer and about once at most twice per day during slow season in the fall. He even taught us some local dialects with heavy accents!

Stop for a quick shot of this interesting indoor theatre on the way to see a show…

Impression Liu San Jie 刘三姐
This is a popular story whereby a young lady, at a time when marriages were arranged by parents with no input from the bride and groom, found a way to be married to her true love by arranging a singing competition with favorite local “mountain songs” 山歌.

However, the show had been through too many changes and had lost the original theme of the story…
Some good songs in local dialect but not great pageantry and hard to follow the storyline, would not recommend this very highly.

Day 3
XiangGong Mountain 相公山
This morning, very early we got up and went to visit XiangGong Mountain 相公山 to watch the sunrise come up over the mountains of Guilin. This mountain was made famous a number of years ago when a local photographer took a sunrise picture over the Karst limestone mountains and cliffs and won an international photography competition because of how beautiful this site was where you could see the Li river running between the mountains with the beautiful sunrise peeking over the mountains.
The mountain is only about 20 miles from YangShuo but it takes about an hour to get there because it is a narrow road, winding up the mountain most of the way.

When you get there, there is a small amount of parking at the base, but a lot of people park along the road before you get to the base of the steps where you will climb up to the scenic viewing area.
We got there right before sunrise and there were many people that had been there for 2 to 3 hours already, unfortunately, we chose to go on a Saturday and there were a lot of people there with the same idea that we had.
From the base, you have to climb up stone steps for about 15 to 20 minutes to get to a beautiful scenic viewing area. It’s beautiful, but it’s not very big and there were quite a few people there already.

The panoramic view is simply gorgeous, and as the sun rises over the mountains and shines down on the river meandering between the mountains, it is truly majestic.

We went to a local restaurant for lunch and ordered their famous bamboo rice which they make by stuffing a mixture of glutinous and regular rice with seasoned taro and corn
and meat inside a large hollowed out piece of bamboo and cooking it on a barbecue grill.
Of course we also ordered other dishes…🐷

Day 4
Our morning walk was amazing …

Early this morning, we went to visit a couple of very scenic and very old bridges in Yangshuo. These bridges were amazing because they were set against the backdrop of the limestone cliffs rising behind them.
Bridge 富里橋

One of these was the beautiful Fuli Bridge 富里橋, a single-arch bridge tucked along a quiet stretch of the Li River 漓江 and surrounded by wild countryside.
This bridge still has most of the original stonework. There were relatively a few people there and it was beautiful to just hang out and enjoy the river and the bridge and the sights beyond.

Yulong Bridge 遇龙橋

After the bridges, we went and visited a very secluded part of town called the Secret Garden.
Secret Garden

There is a boutique hotel here where we had some wonderful fruit juice in a traditional courtyard area that they had, which was just wonderful. We had it all to ourselves, and it was a beautiful place to stretch our legs and relax.

This area is in the countryside village of Jiuxian 舊縣, facing out across rice paddies to the delightful Yulong 遇龙 River Valley with a back-drop of dramatic karst limestone cliffs and mountains.

Yangshuo is one of the best places we have visited in China because of its beautiful scenery and we were able to stay in the community and walked around enjoying the wonderful sites! And the boutique hotel we stayed at was amazing!