On March 18th, Seth and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We decided to celebrate by going to our favorite place in China, Yangshuo, Guangxi province. Yangshuo is the most beautiful city about 2 hours from Guilin. It is relaxing, rustic, exciting, and adventurous! It is everything a person could want from a vacation spot.
We decided to stay at a great hostel outside of town called The Outside Inn. We really liked it. It had a nice setting, great staff, and good food. But there are many rural hostels in the area to try out.
The first night, we decided to get a massage and fire cupping. We found a really good massage parlor very close to West Street next to the 99 Supermarket. I was fighting a head cold so I thought the fire cupping would help fight it off. But one of the coolest parts was Seth’s masseuse even walked on his back! Unfortunately I didn’t notice until she was already climbing down so I didn’t get a picture. But I did get pics of our cupping battle scars.
I took a cooking class. There were two other Americans, a mother and daughter, who took the class with me. That was fun.
Seth and I rented bikes and planned to go out to Moon Hill. But we didn’t make it quite that far. On the way we found a little roadside stand selling the best honey. The family selling it had their own little bee farm right by the road. Seth noticed the honey had a slight orange flavor. As we rode off on the bikes we came to an orange grove just around the corner where the bees must feed. We bought two big jars of the honey. It is sooooo good!
So we continued on to Moon Hill, but as I said, we didn’t make it quite that far. But we did make it to Assembling Dragon Cave. We have been to other caves in China before, and I don’t know what the obsession is with the artifical lighting. It does make for some very lovely pictures, but American caves focus more on natural beauty.
The next day we decided to kayak down the Li River. It was pretty gloomy, so I didn’t get any pics (plus I was afraid of taking my new camera on the river). It was a lot of fun. At first Seth was paddling much faster than me which wasn’t very fun since we couldn’t talk and it wasn’t like we were actually traveling down the river together. So I made him tie his kyak to mine and pull me down the river. That was FUN! It took about 3 hours. We could hear monkeys hooting off in the jungle. We saw a few other people fishing or boating. We had a really nice time.
Our last night we spent down at the famous West Street. We went in the off-season so the vendors were ready to wheel and deal. I got some great deals on gifts, souveniers, and some items I am going to list on ebay to sell so try and supplement my little teacher income.
You can see all the pics from our trip here.