Good company, a bicycle & flowers in my hair

Today was a beautiful day. This place is bursting with beauty everywhere. It is picturesque wherever my eyes peer, like I’m in a movie set, or transposed into a calendar of the “best of Chinese rural scenes”.

We rented bicycles for a laughable $3 for the entire day. Fantastic mountain bikes. We set off, donned flower wreathes in our hair (this is the thing to do when cycling around Yangshuo) and explored the beauty to be enjoyed all around us.

Looking out afar, there’s the odd-shaped mountains silhouetted against the misty sky. In the valleys, the river is like glass, rippled periodically with a tidy white line of a waterfall. The water buffalo is plowing in the rice paddy with the reflection of a mountain before his feet. Nearby, two women, knee-deep in water, plant rice seedlings beneath their wide cone-shaped hats. As I pass the open doorway of a house, two toothless old men throw their heads back in a burst of laughter. At the next doorway, a young man looks out at the same moment as he brings his chopstick clutch of dripping, steaming noodles to his mouth. In front of the stone house to the right, a grandmother bends over her grandbaby, giving her a piece of pomello fruit to taste; her face is filled with a hundred smiles written in wrinkles. A gaggle of bright white ducks congregate at the gate of their home, peaking through the gaps. So many beautiful moments, beautiful glimpses into the lives of others.

For the remainder of my descriptions, let the pictures* take over with more than words…

We were approached by so many people wanting us to go
on a bamboo raft ride that it was practically a greeting in Yangshuo.
We started using it too: "Hello, bamboo?"

Our travel companions looking very cute in their flower wreathes.

I may just start up a bamboo raft industry for tourists
on the Juba Nile...really quite lovely. There's just
that small problem of the bamboo...and the crocodiles...

Ah...Moon Mountain. The place where every hiker gets their own
self-assigned old-lady sherpa with a shoulder-strap cold
box of drinks and a fan for whenever you get tired
(whether you like it or not).

Everybody has a water buffalo...yours is fast and mine is slow...

Sigh...loveliness..

*Note: Many of the photos (and most of the most exceptional ones) were taken by my sister Havilah or her husband Scott on their far superior camera. I wish for any credit to go where it is due.