Yangshuo

Yangshuo is beautiful. From Guilin I was able to get on a bus (15 RMB) for the hour ride to Yangshuo. The buses are quite frequent. Yangshuo is packed with Chinese holidaygoers. It is lies on the Lijiang river and has limestone karsts everywhere. I can't tell if it's like being in an underwater canyon or in a fantasy world. This is definitely where people paint Chinese watercolor scrolls with the rocky crags and rivers. The Chinese tourists are wearing Marlboro cowboy hats, for some reason.
I spent the first day just walking about the pedestrian area and finding a place to stay. Normally, rooms are about 80-120 RMB, but this week they are about 250 RMB. I was lucky to get here on Saturday, the first day of the holiday. Sunday was much more crowded.
They rent bikes here, you can take a bamboo raft ride down the Li River (you can even have dinner on the raft), you can take a course in cooking, calligraphy-writing, tai-chi, and rock-climbing. There are caves you can explore too. This is a place where you could spend a week, easily. I haven't got that much time because I was only allowed a one-month visa (I can extend it once, I think).
For dinner, I ate at the night market where they were cooking a bunch of fresh food. They didn't have menus (it didn't matter since I can't read Chinese). I just pointed at stuff I wanted.
Yesterday, I rented a mountain bike (Giant full-suspension) for 20 RMB (normally like 5-10 RMB) and road to Moon Hill with the rest of the tourists. The roads were crowded with cyclists, some of them on electric scooters.
Moon Hill goes up to a limestone archway.
This evening I am taking a train to Kumming, the capital of the Yunnan province (west of here). It's a 22-hour so I got a hard-sleeper (with air-conditioning). I was charged 60 RMB by the ticketing agency for a ticket that cost 236 RMB. Seems a bit steep, doesn't it? Apparently this is modus operandi of CITS, the Chinese tourism ticketing service. I should have bought the ticket when I was in Guilin from the train station.