More adventures in the Chinese countryside.

The next day was another cycling day. It had been advertised on our itinerary as an all day cycle ride through the countryside...
Our ride started at our guesthouse. From there we went past some farms and down along side the river. It was a very calm and peaceful ride, a far cry from what it would have been like to cycle in Beijing! The scenery was spectacular - lime karst cliffs, paddy fields and the occasional water buffalo as we went along the dirt track road. We were headed for a place called Moon Hill, around 10km away.

(As we approached on our bikes ladies started running along side us talking and pointing to each other. It was quite disconcerting. Later we realised that these women follow you the whole way up, fanning you as required and trying to get you to buy a drink. They fluctuated between being very useful - cooling you down, and being very annoying and getting in the way. We had a lot of admiration for them though, climbing up and down all day.)

A lot of the local tour operators advertise Moon Hill as somewhere to go to go caving and swim in the pools after you've gone down the mud slide, but this wasn't on our schedule. Instead, when we got there we bought tickets to climb to the top. As you probably know, i'm quite a lot lazier than Chris, and a climb to the top a big hill isn't really my idea of a good time, but I was told it would be worth it so up we went. 850 steps! No real break between them - just straight up. Even the fit members of our group were sweating half their body weight in the mid 30 degree heat. But unfortunately, for pretty much our entire time in China, there has been a haze over the country. Initially in Beijing we thought it was pollution, but it was everywhere and hence the view from the top of the hill was pretty crappy, in fact the view from the bottom was better because you could see the moon shaped hole in the hill. Never mind!!

Later we cycled back into Yangshou. A bit hairy at times, going around roundabouts, but generally a nice days cycle ride.

We got a bus back to the inn that we were staying at further afield in Yangshou. This was one of our more basic accomodations. Our room was further out than everyone elses and backed on to a private farm. There were some very loud dogs for a lot of the first night.
Things that people found in their rooms included spiders with bodies the size of a tennis ball, a toad, cockroaches and we had a giant beetle which I mistook for a tortoise (a small tortoise!). It was quite hard to get to sleep there at first, not knowing what might be creeping over the mosquito net, but the 2nd night we were so tired from cycling that we slept well.