Returning

[ayun]

I spent most of the last week hanging around a town in China called Yangshuo. My hotel was about 5 km outside of town proper, in a village called Chao Long, and a freshly paved road connected the two by winding between towering karsts, lotus ponds and roadside rice fields. I rented a bicycle for the week to ride back and forth along that road, from

Comments

[pops]

Welcome home!

[ayun]

Thanks! I owe you guys a phone call but I keep falling asleep at 8 PM!

[spitcurl]

Welcome back! How was it having a "quiet" week in a village after a whirlwind 2 weeks gallivanting with cris & hysterikal?

[ayun]

Thanks!

It was really nice, though I did have moments of chastising myself for not trying to squeeze in one more destination. Yangshuo's one of those places that encourages lingering, but for me that means three nights instead of two, y'know?

All in all it was a great trip.

Also, Cris is totally into the idea of chartering a gulet and cruising around Turkey with a group of people.

[cris]

I was thinking, on my flight back, and being jealous of your extra week, if it would have been worthwhile to cram in another destination like Yangshuo or just pad in an extra day or two in each of the places that we visited. It seemed like with only three or four days in each place, we'd wind up spending a day of travel on either end, two days of sightseeing and then only a day for chilling out. But, yeah, establishing a routine of relaxed wandering in a place like that sounds super idyllic.

most of my commuting is done with the 3-speed fixed Raleigh, but sometimes, after a long weekend ride, I'll go back to riding the ANT in the city for a few days. It's always a little weird switching between the two geometries and drivetrains, but that tends to fade after the first ten minutes, and I get to enjoy each bike for what they are.

[ayun]

I spent close to a week there and would have been happy to stay longer. There's plenty of stuff to do nearby, and lots of travel agencies that can arrange out-of-town trips (I made a side trip to the rice terraces at Longji via an agency office in Yangshuo - you can do that as a day trip, or arrange an overnight in Ping'An or another village).

Favorite place in China...tough to say. Probably Beijing just for the sheer number of things to do in and around the city. That was the one part of the trip that was just go-go-go because there was so much we wanted to do and see.

Cris went home after Beijing, so I was in Yangshuo on my own. I stayed at this place:
http://www.yangshuo-outside.com/cms/front_content.php
It was quite nice, and the staff was great.