Moon Hill, near Yangshuo, Guangxi province, China
Despite all intentions of having an early start to make full use of the day, my two friends and I eventually met up at around 10.30am, coming from our respective hotels to the centre of the little tourist village of Yangshuo. There are many people around the street trying to rent you bicycles, and my friends very amusingly tried out a tandem before deciding that they weren't going to get very far that way. In China, you can bargain for everything. Well, so they say, but our attempts to get the price of three bikes lowered was unsuccessful, so we paid over our 10 yuan each, plus a total of 200 yuan deposit, and set off.
Moon Hill is very well known in the area, and is so-called because of a large moon-shaped hole going right through the hill near the peak. However there are no signs to guide you there, either in Chinese or in English. Most people probably take someone up on their offer to guide you around the countryside and show you all the best places for the day for 50 yuan. But it's not that difficult to find. I found a "Yangshuo tour map for local" on the back of a leaflet for a water cave, and with that managed to navigate the way out of the town, straight over 2 roundabouts, and following the main road for around 7km as it twisted and turned through limestone peaks, before arriving at a large sign which stated you had arrived at Moon Hill. There's a car park there where we paid 9 yuan each to enter the hill and another 1 yuan per bicycle to make sure it would be there when we returned.
As we tied up the bikes, we were surrounded by little old Chinese women trying to sell us bottles of chilled water to take with us. Shaking them off, we started the march up the hill.
A good path led from the car park up through a pretty forest where the sunshine forced its way through the leaves to dance on the path in front of us. After a long climb up stone steps, a stone picnic table was conveniently situated by the path for us to rest at and munch on some dried banana which we had bought in Yangshuo earlier, before setting off again. More stone steps awaited us, and every so often a little old Chinese lady would appear with a basket full of bottles of water, and offer us one for a few yuan. By this time some water to drink would be very welcome, so I bartered with them as I went, and eventually got the price down to one and a half yuan which is very reasonable indeed.
Eventually we climbed above the trees and found ourselves in the moon-shaped hole. The view was incredible, and several other little groups of people were there admiring it too, so some mutual photo-taking was done. Here the well-kept path ended, but a couple emerged from a muddy trail leading through the bushes to the other side, saying there was a way to the top, which was ok but the lady would certainly never do it again. I was a little worried as to what that meant, but we decided to keep going nonetheless. A few yards further on there was a small plateau to the right with another beautiful view where we spent 5 minutes taking far too many photos. Then we went back to the track and carried on up the hill. It was muddy and very slippery, but quite safe, and every so often the trees would open out to let us glimpse another superb view. After about half an hour, the trees again gave way to rock and we pulled ourselves up the last few metres to the summit.
From the top the sight was absolutely wonderful. It was perhaps the 2nd highest hill in the area, and in all directions there were fairytale limestone peaks pushing up through an otherwise totally flat land. Little villages, rivers and rice fields coloured the view. The sun was shining brightly and it was a perfect spot to sit and munch on some more dried banana and raisins and just look out into the distance.
Another half an hour passed, and another couple made it to the top. We left them to enjoy the view, and made our way back down. The mud gave us quite a few slips, but we got back to the moon hole without falling over, and from there on it was easy. At the bottom, the women awaited us with little notebooks where many people had written notes to tell us how wonderful the food and experience was when they'd gone with this nice lady to her house to have lunch. They showed us pictures and described the food, but we weren't really hungry so got on our bikes and headed off for some more exploring. There were plenty of places to see, down little dirt tracks off the main road, where green lakes hid or where little villages could be found with minority peoples carrying on their everyday lives. We spent the afternoon cycling around, before making our way back to Yangshuo to return the bikes and have a hearty meal.
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