Yangshuo: Moon Hill and the Water Caves

We nursed our horrible baijiu headaches off with some milk tea and American style breakfasts and rented some bikes to head out of Yangshuo to see the famous moon hill-a mountain with a huge moon shaped hole in the middle. It was a beautiful bike ride out as the country side around Yangshuo is absolutely stunning! There were many locals and tourists biking along the road as well as locals selling freshly picked strawberries on the side of the road.

After about 45 minutes of biking we had reached the moon hill cave and decided to hike to the top to check out the view. We reached the top in a record breaking 25 minutes and enjoyed the view of the surrounding jests and country side through the half moon shaped hole at the top. It was pretty cool and of course like everything in the Yangshuo area stunningly beautiful

After we came down the hill we grabbed some lunch at a little restaurant and decided it was time to head for the moon caves... Only one problem, we had no idea where they were. As I have already stated in the pasta, maps in China are absolute rubbish so we couldn't quite figure put where to go. It didn't help that there were two caves called the water caves in the area and we and already boughten tickets for one of them. After about an hour of cycling in circles and asking a few locals we made it to the water caves just as it was starting to rain.

The caves were pretty comical. Back home, if there was caves and you had a guided tour through them you would dawn a hard hat and a flashlight and get schooled in the different rock formations and all the science behind it. Well not in China! They had lots of colorful lights all over the caves to give it a very fairy tale like feel. The best part though was that our tour guide kept pointing out different animals that one could see in the rock formations. There was a turtle drinking water, an elephant, some more turtles, and a smiling Buddha. Everywhere we turned there was a new rock that looked like something different. I felt really bad when she would ask us to guess what we thought it was because we totally sucked at it. I think there was one rock formation in particular though that was quite hilarious. As we approached it, our guide said, "next we will see mother love and father love rocks. Look up and you will see mother love. It looks like many breasts on the roof of the cave. Over here you will see father love, and as you can see, it looks like well you know!" She was flustered and refused to say the word penis. Nathan and I thought it was so funny how embarrassed she was by the word. I don't know if the fact that they decided the rocks looked like penises or that she couldn't say the English word was funnier.

After we were finished with the Las Vegas of caves, it was time for the fun part and the reason we even came to the caves in the first place... The mud bath! It looked so disgusting as it was literally a huge pool of thick mud and we were warned that it was cold. It took a while to just dive right in but once we did it was so much fun. We had a mud fight and I of course lost. It was too cold to stay in long so we hopped out and moved on to the underground hot springs. They were pretty shallow but still a nice way to warm up after bathing in cold mud.

We biked back to Yangshuo just in time to have dinner and catch the bus back to Xingping. May i note that this was the only evening that we did catch the bus back. It was a very funny and relaxing day and by the time we got back to the hostel and showered up, it was time for bed!