Rest of Yangshuo trip

First, a few updates on world news as it affects China and me:
- The government crackdown in China has intensified to affect many aspects of the internet, which is now pretty slow all the time.  The only way I can get gchat or other normally-unaffected things is through my vpn, which so far is holding up.  Adam's vpn service was cracked by the government and he was unable to access blocked sites for several days.

- So far, wind around Japan is still heading out to the Pacific ocean and not towards China.


And now, a return to travel blogging :)  Our last full day in Yangshuo dawned surprisingly sunny and warm, since it had rained all the previous day.  We decided to venture out to a nearby mountain/rock formation named Moon Hill, so named because of a round hole in the mountain.  Really it is a natural bridge, but with more on top than just a bridge.  We biked from the guesthouse to the park, raced past the touts guarding the entrance, and headed up the (what seemed like) miles of stone steps.

When we got to the top, a really old lady sold us Coke and postcards and we had a spectacular view of the surrounding rock formations.  I'm afraid the pictures don't do it justice because there was some lingering mist from the rain the day before, but I'll include a few anyway.  We stayed on top of the mountain just to gawk for quite a while, we had almost a 360 degree view.

Afterwards, we biked into Yangshuo proper and found a hidden gem - the Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant. Its hard to find truly vegetarian Chinese food since so many foods involve at least broth or fat, but this place was amazing.  We had fried and battered eggplant, pumpkin soup, a peanut/cracker/veggie mix with spectacular carrot flowers, one other dish that I'm forgetting (eek!) as well as ginger tea.  We were so full!

The spectacular peanut/cracker mix ala carrot

We got slightly lost on the way back to the guesthouse but managed to run into some other guests, one of whom luckily spoke Chinese, and we eventually made it.  We spent the evening hanging out in the hotel restaurant, playing Monopoly Deal and chatting with other guests.  The next day we left Yangshuo to head back to Beijing; more on Andrew's Adventures in Beijing soon.  See below for some pictures from our time in Yangshuo, including days I've already talked about in the blog.

View from the guesthouse courtyard

The bamboo boats on the Yulong River

The view from our raft - complete with trigger happy tourists like us!

A farmhouse on the bike trail

Yangshuo on the rainy day we visited

On the Li River in Yanshuo

At the cooking class - yes, that is the biggest knife i've ever used

The formations at sunset