Ok, this is going to be quite a long photo-heavy post, I’ll warn you in advance!

We got into our B&B at Moon Hill Village (The Yangshuo Village Inn) at almost midnight on Wednesday night, I already knew that the bar would close at midnight (I called in advance when I found out the flight times to make sure) so I made sure I got my order in before we checked in (actually it was touch and go, I thought I might have to call from the taxi). First impressions were that the B&B was really well done out and very clean, the staff were very friendly and all spoke good English. Anyway, after a quick chat with the staff and look around I quickly downed my beer and we made our way upstairs and pretty much went to bed straight away.

Her Royal H’ness outside our B&B

I was the first to wake up the next morning (as always) at around 6am and took a first peek out of the window, all good, we’d got a nice view of moon hill and the village and it wasn’t raining!!, I described the view enthusiastically to H but she pulled the duvet over her head before I could even finish the first sentence, talk about lack of holiday spirit… I noticed a foot protruding from the covers and decided to coax her into enjoying the view with me by romantically scraping my thumb backwards over her exposed sole, from toe to heel, this temporarily had the desired effect in getting her up (I still have a bruise on my ribs to prove it) but she quickly resumed her position and wrapped herself even more tightly in the duvet. In the end I had to grab her by the ankle, drag her off the bed and lift her into position next to the window (still tightly wrapped in duvet) so that she could share the romantic moment with me (and you know what, she never even thanked me!).

I don’t know what was wrong, maybe she as a bit tired, but in the end I decided to leave her in peace and go for a poke around the village.

At this time of day the village was peaceful, with the local farmers delivering food and chicken everywhere pecking at anything that looked remotely edible, I could already see that our B&B was surrounded by restaurants and small shops which were yet to open. The main street was only short (150m or so) with all the restaurants on one side of the street facing moon hill and single storey gift shops on the opposite side which didn’t block the view. Note, it’s a legal requirement in Moon Hill village that every photograph has Moon Hill in the background!

Some farmer dudes doing farming stuff

Tomorrow’s dinner eating yesterday’s leftovers

Old house made from mud bricks

When H got up we took advantage of the free bike hire I’d negotiated with the hotel and took off away from the village and the main road towards the unknown. This was one of my favourite things of the whole holiday, just riding around the surrounding countryside on tiny roads (quite often just dirt tracks) and only seeing the odd car every 20 minutes or so, not knowing what was around the next corner and coming across small, real villages* with smiling locals and their toothy grins, farming the land and washing clothes in the village ponds.

After 3 hours or so we made our way back to Moon Village for some lunch to find the village completely transformed into a lunch stop for tour buses, the high street was packed with buses struggling to park/leave and crowds of tourists browsing the hundreds of gift shops and gift carts which had appeared from nowhere. We dropped off our bikes at the hotel to find the open land in front of our balcony had become a bus park for about 8 coaches (actually this didn’t really matter, for the times we were mainly at the hotel (early morning and late evening) the village remained quiet and peaceful and anyway, very little sound carried through the huge window in our room.

We ate at the huge restaurant next to our hotel, an expensive yet lack-lustre beer fish (90rmb at just about any of the very average restaurants I saw recommendations for during my stay), posed for a few photos with moon hill and took the bus into Yangshuo. Ok, let me rewind a bit, I’d guess that maybe 1000 people go through moon hill village on a tour bus every day, of which around 99% of them pose for a photo pretending to hold up the hole of moon hill with their hands, it won’t be long before every living person in the world has one of these photos somewhere on their hard drive:

Don’t concentrate on the finger or you’ll miss all the heavenwy gwory

Yangshuo is pretty much a woman’s place by day and man’s place by night, the famous West Street is basically an enormous gift market selling t-shirts / handbags / lighters etc etc etc (all complete tat), there are several shops which just sell matches alone. H was in her element flitting from store to store picking gifts for nephews and cousins.

In the evening I took H to see Liu San Jie on the Li river, a show where 2000 people are distracted by flashing lights and boats while they are harvested for blood by the estimated 25 trillion mosquitos which swarm the crowd as soon as the lights go down. I was constantly rinsing myself in mosquito repellent and batting away insects which were landing on me every few seconds, all around us people complained of being eaten alive, but in the end I escaped with relatively few bites (which I react to terribly).

It was as if we were watching the show through a blizzard, I did see a firefly for the first time ever though so it was all worthwhile

Later we made our way back into town and found the bar I’d gone to on my previous trip, Bar 98, it’s on a back street away from the hustle of west street (think dreadful bars with thumping dance music and laser shows with promoters on the street clapping in time to the music and literally dragging potential customers off the street (well, I saw them doing it once anyway)), it’s a nice enough place, pool table, cheap drinks, ah it reminds me of Harleys…..

So that was it really, a few beers and a Long Island Iced Tea (ordered along with a beer, to drink while waiting for my change) proved to be sufficient (H had two Mai Tais) and we made our way back to the hotel ready for day 2.

*Definition of a real village:

• you don’t have to pay to get in
• nobody offers to be your guide
• no gift shops
• no restaurants