Jingyi Villa Chengde

... emperor's summer resort") was beautiful. The main buildings are made of this super fragrant wood called nanmu (apparently only the emperor could use this wood an if anyone else used it they were executed). You can also see a picture of the emperor's chair (I think the color of the emperor is this bright yellow, I saw it a lot there). Then we took a stroll around the grounds, which is the biggest garden in the country. We also saw ...

... at 22m high surronded by her two worn out disciples and thousands of small effigies of Buddha.<br><br>There are few other temples around Puning temple, which unfortunetly could not compete with the grand of the Guanyin. Puyou temple is relatively small and can be done within 20 minutes. I decided not to visit the remaining temple as I am temple MAX out..<br><br>The Dongpo restaurant opposite train station providea a nice tasty meals. Try the ...

... cutter stopped me and tried to give me a ton of apples i only took one. After that I went back to town. There is one small problem i have going to Chengde alone. That would be the fact that i know all these amazing places to eat because i had a homestay family there but these are all places that would would go with several people not alone. Oh well. I ended back at KFC where i got take out. Then i went back to my hotel ate dinner while watching CCTV 9 (the english news station here ...

We had a few reasons to visit Yangshuo, mainly the Li River and the Karst Mountains as well as it was not too far from Guilin where we would be taking our last Chinese flight on to Hong Kong and our final destination. We had read and heard that it was a very busy Western-tourist town with shops and restaurants catering for them BUT we had no idea what we were in for... We checked into our hotel which was another "bigger is better" style hotel but there were a few redeeming ...

As one of the more famous scenic tourist destinations in southern China, I had anticipated much in the way of crowds and hawkers. Maybe Yangshou had numbed me to all that, because the Longji (Dragon's Backbone) rice terraces seemed remarkably low-key and stress free in comparison. Even though the main village, Ping'an, seemed to be about half guest houses and hotels, there were very few tourists (foreign or domestic) staying there - I know I was the only one in my guest house ...

Hired bikes again to visit Fuli, a small town further down the Li River. Mini looked relieved when we said we'd make our own way but was also not sure we'd make it on our own. Undeterred we set off with what we thought was a good map. We quickly picked up an American couple who also had no idea how to get to Fuli. After getting lost in a small village for an age, it seemed no roads led out of it and everytime we thought we'd found one it went straight into the river. We ...

To see the best of Yangshuo and the area you need to explore on bike. Our guide, Mini, had told us to wear clothes we don't mind getting a little dirty. So we were really surprised to see her dressed as if she was on her way to wedding, complete with flowery hat! The bikes were new mountain bikes, but Mini had her trusty shopping bike. We cycled an hour until we reached the Yulong River. Here we got on a bamboo raft with bikes and journeyed downstream. Every couple of hundred metres ...

Got on a boat to travel down the Li River, it's very famous in China and most renowned painters come here to paint. Breathtaking scenery with lots of small peaks and it's incredibly green, sun still out so it's very hot. Arrived at Yangshuo after a couple of hours on the boat having not pre-booked any accomodation. Luckily we quickly found a guide ...

So been a couple interesting days. One wednesday we went to the 'big buddha temple' a temple in town which has the largest wooden buddha in the world, over 7 stories tall. its name translated is roughly numerous hand numerous eye goddess of mercy. 42 arms with eyes in each palm it was definately a cool experience. IES hired a couple tour guides to go with us that were supposed to show us around. they told us we could take some incense, go pray in front of the buddha and the monks would ...

... laughter. At the park we bumped into a group eating pears from the orchard. They gave us some to try and the same conversation happened again. We went to visit our new friends' dorm and the girls marveled that I had only been studying for three months. They had studied English for six years, but were too embarrassed to try much of it with us. I feel like it is necessary to point out that none of these were real conversations. We stuck to such ...