The Beautiful Lonji Rice Terraces

We travelled from our guesthouse to Guilin by bus before changing to a smaller public bus for the trip to the bottom of the lonji area. We then got another public bus for the ride up into the hills (mountains?). Driving up steep roads with sheer drops to your sides is scary at the best of times, but in China it just seemed that extra bit frightening! Not sure the driver always looked where he was going. Also, whilst beeping your way around the corner is quite a good plan, it doesnt really help if you don't slow down at all!

But as has luckily been the case so far, we got to our destination safe and sound!

You have to buy a ticket to enter the area of Lonji. It is the most extensive area of rice paddies in China and also home to some minority tribal groups. One of these groups has been awarded the record for the longest group hair (or something like that!). The women all have extraordinarily long hair which they wear in a kind of coil around their head. If you pay them 4 yuan they'll get it out for you! And maybe even wash it in a waterfall. We decided against that little bit of weirdness. There was a very fine line whilst we staying there between supporting the local people making a living from tourism and exploiting them.
Some people (not in our group) rode up the terraces in a sedan chair! Quite sickening, or paying someone a decent wage? Discuss.

Anyho, the buses can only go so far. So we walked the rest of the way up to our guesthouse. The rice terraces looked amazing. Definietly on a par with the Great Wall for sheer scale and beauty. They were created around 600 years ago at the same time as the Great Wall to help to feed the growing population and they take your breath away ( not just becasue they're quite steep).

Our guesthouse was simple, clean and had a stunning view. We were all hot and hungry, so after a hearty lunch our local guide showed us the way to a pool so that we could dip our toes!
The guide was great! His name was Farmer Tang. He was so sweet and funny, really good natured - he brought us a bag of mandarins from his farm to share. He was the only guide that we all put extra in for his tip! A really nice guy! Check out the photos of the walk - he's the short Chinese one!!

It was a quiet evening - not much to do around those parts and we had to get up early the next morning so that we could make an early start on the 5 hour walk to the next guesthouse before the heat set in .
Not everyone decided to do the long wwalk. Whilst the up bits are quite exhausting, they're okay but the downward slopes were often a bit too tricky for Jen - I didn't want to lose my footing and end up rolling down the steps. Some other people were ill so 6 of us climbed back down to the buses to drive to the guesthouse and 7 people walked.
Those of us that took the bus actually ended up with a harder climb in the end as we were back at the bottom again!
The group that did the long walk enjoyed the fantastic scenery and lots of informative and not so informative comments from Farmer Tang.

We all met up again at lunch time at our new guesthouse. That afternoon was spent snoozing and relaxing.
Chris & I learnt how to play Mahjong. It's cool.
We were treated to a show by some women who live in the area. We were all a bit sceptical and nervous about joining in at first but it turned out to be hillarious! They were quite am - dram about it - geting their pompoms stuck in each others pompoms and giggling! They made us join in. One dance was in pairs going under everyones arched arms in turn untill they decided to catch someone. That person happened to be Tom who was then blindfolded and had to find his bride in the circle. We all got out of the way so that he picked his girlfriend. They then had to try to get out of the circle - Rosie on Toms back! We think they're married in the Lonji area now!
We also did some bamboo pole dancing! Hopping in and out the poles as they tap them together on the floor!

It was a great area to be in after we'd spent so much time in the cities. The next day we left at midday so we took one final climb up to a view point to see the terraces in all their splendour and then climbed down to where the buses are for our ride back to Guilin for our last overnight train.