After such a superb day out yesterday in Yangshuo we've decided on setting aside today to go to the caves. It was about a one hour bike ride through rice paddy's and some incredible mountainous scenery. First stop was the Big Ban Yan tree. Having never heard of a Ban Yan tree I was mildly interested. From a distance my first thought was 'That tree isn't very big... this is rubbish!!' however up close you could see it was actually pretty cool. The tree itself has roots that come up as other trees and are attached to the branches of the tree itself. No idea how it's happened (maybe Myles can enlighten us). Next stop was Moon Hill. It was given its name as the huge rock outcrop at the top of the hill is round and looks like its namesake. It was awesome from the side and to get to the top it was some 1,200 steps... we didn't count because we didn't go! We went up about half way followed by 2 women trying to sell us drinks all the way up. We stopped at a place for lunch and ended up buying a couple of beers from them just to get them to go away! We went back to the bottom, got on our bikes and went to the centre attraction of the day, the Water Cave.
The Water Cave is a huge cave, by huge I mean that it stretches up to 130mtrs high in some places. To get in though you have to practically lie down in a boat since the entrance to the cave is so small. We had a bit of fun with 'Driver' as we affectionately named him and when we had a bit of fun scaring Alice and Briony before left him for our guide to take us round. The guide was rubbish. We kept stopping at places so she could tell us what a certain rock looked like. A lot of it was very much clutching straws: "Hmm, yes... I see how that could look like a monkey" we lied. Further into the cave we finally got to the mud baths. This was great fun. A huge bath of mud, ace! After swimming, floating, diving, wrestling and sliding in mud we quickly washed ourselves off and bathed in the natural hot springs. Bliss. The only downside is that Andy wasn't able to join us. Unfortunately he's come down with a stomach (shitting) problem and although we may have been able to hide it in mud baths it would have been a bit of a problem everywhere else.
Next day we went to Guilin to catch our sleeper train to Kunming. Tomorrow we head out to Lejiang where we stay the night before our trek around Tiger Leaping Gorge. Can't wait! Posting in China has now become quite difficult. Since the Chinese government aren't too liberal with the Internet I will not be able to go on Blogspot myself. Any posts I make I'll e-mail to my Dad to upload for me, until I reach Laos that is.
1 comment:
Great stuff Ian, hope i've done it all Ok, Dad xx
From Ian's email..
I hope you are well and send my love to everyone at home. If you have any problems just e-mail me. There may be Internet in the Lejiang hostel. Tell Mum it was great to talk to her and I'll try and get on the phone when I get a chance in the next few weeks.
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