Ch 26: A Strange Village in the Mists

July 24

Arriving in GuiLin after 19 hours of sitting up was not as bad as I thought. Like many things in life you can get use to it, even long overnight train rides. I've always loved to ride trains as I like to view the places I'm going from the ground up. After over 60 hours on Chinese trains I still enjoy them.

We decided to skip over Guilin and go 60km south to YangShuo, a "backpacker" town. When we arrived it was obvious that this place was not a Chinese city but some strange foreign village filled with many tourists both foreign and Chinese. The scenery is beautiful with calm rivers carrying currents past rolling picture perfect limestone hills and mountains. The surreal painting like backdrop made the experience of this strange village that much stranger. It's a backpacker town filled with as many people eating pizza and burritos as would be eating rice or noodles. As strange as it is there's no doubt this is one of China's most scenic areas.

But it is summer time and the humidy is getting to me. I would have been fine had I not taken the train from Kunming where it's always spring time and theres no humidity at all. Can you tell I really like Kunming?