Day 23 - Off to the serene village of Ping'an

Today we left the captivating beauty of Yangshuo and its surrounding mountains, and headed for the bus station for our bus back to Guilin. We we sidetracked on the way by the pancake lady - where we got our breakfast! In Guilin we caught the bus to Longsheng, a small town about 2 and a half hours out of Guilin. The bus ride to Longsheng provided some amazing scenery as we traversed the gorges - we finally saw some rivers Dad (Ross) might like to jetboat, but they soon became unpassable due to the massive boulders blocking the way! We were contemplating staying the night in Longsheng, but on arrival decided to go straight to Ping'an, which is to be our base for the next few days.

It had already been a long day of travelling, but the need for a place to sleep and eat drove us on. When we got to Ping'an we were met by Susan who took us to her hostel, which was a good 20 minute hike up through the mountains, set in the picturesque Ping'an village - a small, 600 year old Zhuang village on the main ridge of the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces. It is stunning here, so we've decided to stay for 3 nights to explore the terraces. Our room is absolutely stunning - we have views out over the village and the terraces. We had our lunch / dinner at Susan's of consisted of delicious fried noodles and a spicy mushroom and cucumber soup. It's becoming the norm here to survive on 2 really big meals (because Chinese do 'big' really well!) a day, rather than the 3-4 meals we're used to at home. After a rest and food we headed out to the terraces to take in the view at 'viewpoint number 2'. The rice terraces are gigantic and we can see them 360 degrees around us. These terraces reach up 800m worth of mountainous peaks, which have been developed over generations to the amazing sight that are here today. The terraces are called Longji terraces in Chinese, and the highest terrace is 1180m above sea-level and the lowest is 380m above sea-level. These amazing terraces were first cultivated in the 13th Century during the Yuan Dynasty. The biggest terrace is over a hectare in size, the smallest may only have a couple of seedlings.

From the viewpoint we stumbled across one of the most remote China Post offices nestled in the mountains. We tried to walk to the village centre, but it became very dark very quick and the rain was making the paths slippery, so we headed back to the safety of Su San Hotel. Peacefully adlibing it in Ping'an