Tips 👏
- Do not stay in Gulin, all the attraction are nearby Yangshuo.
- Yangshuo is a big city made for international tourist.
- You can commute from Guilin by train to Xingping and then bus to Yangshuo, or private transfer (arrange that with your hotel upfront).
- Avoid to get an hotel nearby West Street in Yangshuo, since it’s very noisy.
🏠 Accommodation
We stayed in a central AirBnB in Yangshuo, while the staff was very helpful and the location nice, the room was very very small so won’t recommend it.
🚲 Getting there
We came by bus from Fenghuang, took us 6h30. Long but very cheap.
⏱ Duration
We stayed four nights, including commute, and felt that was enough.
Yangshuo was a nice little break from Chinese city. It get some similarities with Thailand’s touristic city, with a lot of weird bars and fast food on the main street, but finally english menu in the restaurants.
Li River Cruise boat 🛥
We booked the cruise with our hotel for 60$/person. It started at 10:30AM in the city centre pier. The big boat made its way up on the river until north of XingPing in about 6 hours.
It was a beautiful cruise, with horrible lunch included, during what we observed from very close all the rock formations. We also saw the landscape which is printed at the back of the 20RMB note. Very chill and slow cruise, but definitely worth it!
Bamboo Raft Tour - Yulong River 🛶
The next morning, we started a two hours cruise on the Yulong River, at the north east of Yangshuo. We enjoyed a very peaceful ride, few centimetres over the water in a tiny bamboo raft, where we appreciated the local landscape. We also passed onto some barriers of one meter for the highest which was a pretty funny sensation.
Moon Hill and motorbike 🛵
We decided our China trip wasn’t complete without at least one motorbike day. For our last day, we rented an electric motorbike from our hotel for 30RMB and went around the city.
We found a lot of small spots to visit around, but the main one was the Moon Hill. A sort of big hole at the top of the mountain. We drove there in 20 minutes, paid 2RMB for parking, 20RMB for the tickets and started the hike. It took us 45 minutes of steep stairs until the top where we arrived inside the hole, with a crazy view on the valley. On the way down, we stopped by what they call the Dresser point (signs on the way), where we had the best view on the hill.
From there, we made our way back to the city. We did an extra stop to the Big Banyan Tree, which is a 1500 years old tree. At the same spot, there was also the possibility to do a Hot-Air balloon ride. Worth a 30 minutes little break.
We then drove to a nice little restaurant, north of Yangshuo, in a hotel called Amy’s on the Li. Good quality ingredients and international cuisine. We highly recommend if you want a nice dinner in a calm area with view.
Hope this was helpful, you can ask us any questions on Instagram.