Ping'an

We headed out of Yangshuo on the tourist bus heading for Ping'an, a Zhuang ( a minority group) village perched high in an area called the Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces. The easiest way to get there is to catch a tour group bus otherwise you have to catch local buses and change twice etc etc, but by catching this bus you have to join in the tour and listen to the tour guide.

You also stop in the village of "The women with the long hair" and watch a show put on by the woman of the village. Traditionally the woman don't cut their hair and wear it up in different styles according to whether they are single, married, have children etc. Part of the show is them taking their hair down showing it off and putting it back up. The sad thing is, some of the hair is fake these days. We met a traveller who saw one of the fake pieces fall off during a private performance, much to the embarrassment of the wearer!!

The highlight of the day was leaving the show with a hundred or so Chinese group tourists and having to cross a slippery swing bridge across a river. We were half way across when the childlike male Chinese decided to make the bridge swing from side to side. Trapped in the middle of the bridge, hemmed in by the group, staring down at a raging river, with a phobia of swing bridges, Mandy decided to try to put a stop to this behaviour. At the top of her voice she yelled " Stop that, you are being very silly, stop this". I think the perpetrators took this outburst from this strange foreigner as enthusiasm and swung even harder.

We inched our way safely across with Mandy wagging her finger in admonition at every participant.

We finally got on a smaller bus which snaked its way up a scary incline to the entrance to the village of Ping'an. It was pouring with rain and we knew the walk to the village was difficult so we hired two local ladies to carry our bags in baskets on their backs.

Wet, tired and cold we got to our guesthouse, got a great, cosy room with a wonderful view and decided to extend our stay for a few days. The room felt like a ship's cabin perched high on the bridge and Mandy swore she could feel it move!

We just sat for 3 days and watched the clouds drift in and out.......perfect.