Day 15: Guilin to Yangshuo, Sunday 5th October 2025
Yangshuo Park Pagoda at sunset
35°, fine/cloudy later with some showers
NZ$1 = Y4
Y1=NZ$0.25
Up at 6:30am, uptairs for breakfast then back down to pack our bags. Down to the lobby at 7:45am. I am not feeling the best today, with a sore throat and a runny nose; probably picked up on a train somewhere in the last 2 weeks.
Today we are heading to Yangshuo by boat; NZ$316 for the 2 of us, on a 4 star boat with lunch included. We had booked the boat through Get Your Guide ( one of the websites we used for booking things on this trip ) and the trip was run by Visit Our China. There were lots of options/choices for this trip as is very popular with the locals and tourists. The boat company sent a driver to pick us up from the hotel and he was waiting for us when we got down there. We expected to get a shuttle bus and to have to pick up other people on the way, but it was just us in a car. Our driver was not very talkative but was super helpful when we got to the boat station. From the hotel we drove across the river then headed south east to Zhujiang Pier, which took nearly an hour. The Li River ( Lijiang ) flows through Guilin but it is not navigable in that area so all the boats leave from further down river at Zhejiang Pier or Mopanshan Wharf ( almost next to each other ). We arrived at 8:35am for a 9:15am departure. Our driver took our passports and went and got our tickets for us ( he didn’t have to, his job was to deliver us to the pier ) then directed us to the correct lane to get into the terminal building, then he headed off. The terminal building was quiet crowded ( lots of boats go at the same time ) and pretty basic, but we grabbed some drinks just as our time slot was being called, then got a out onto the pier and along to pier 8 ( which took about 5 minutes ), and onto our boat at 8:55am.
We grabbed our seats ( large armchair type seating, 2 seats either side of a table ), left our bags at the front of the cabin, got the usual bottle of water and waited for departure. The seats opposite us were filled by a lady and her adult daughter; neither of them spoke to us. The boat has a lower cabin ( where we were, and where the buffet was ), and an upper cabin and a deck on the top, and probably had 150 people on board. The boats come in 3 star, 4 star and 5 star options ( with matching price and food ranges ), and seem to be run by many companies.
Left at 9:20am ( with a 180 degree turn / traffic jam to start the cruise ), along with about 20 other boats and headed down river. The boats followed each other most of the way but as we got further down river they spread out a bit. It was not however the ideal ‘on a boat alone on the river’ type of cruise. Immediately as we left the pier we headed into a gorge with hills on both sides ( Karst Mountains ) and pretty much stayed in this type of scenery all the way to Yangshuo. We passed a few towns/villages on the way, some seemed quite large and a few of them were venues for people to get on the traditional rafts and take a mini cruise on the Li River. We also noticed a lot of camping happening on the banks of the river, mainly in tents, but there were a few camper vans as well.
The buffet lunch was served at about 12pm and it was good. Up until lunch all the announcements had been in Chinese so we didn’t know what was being announced, but when lunch was served one of the waitresses made a point of telling us that lunch was ready as the announcement had been in Chinese. The boat had mainly Chinese tourists, but there were a few non-local faces on board.
The trip went pretty quick, with lots of things to see on the way. The ‘highlight’ of the trip was a point just north of Xingping ( a town we would stay at tomorrow night, which the boat passed by on the way to Yangshuo ) which is the image on the back of the 20 yuan note ( with a bit of artist license! ). It got cloudier as we headed further south along the river, which was quite nice as it was very hot in the sun.
We arrived at Yangshuo at 1:20pm, tied up and got off. We let the hoards go first but even so the effect of 20 boats with 150 people on each was a very crowded terminal building. We dragged our bags up the ramp from the river, then headed towards town; the ferry port is about a kilometre north of town, with a long covered walkway between the two. The walkway was full of stalls selling trinkets and souvenirs ( many versions of the same ones ) and it was a bit of a battle to get through them all. We finally exited the walk way onto a road, and decided we would walk to the hotel ( we understood the hotel only had pedestrian access only, and we were already half way there ). We headed down the road along the riverfront then turned into town proper.
Due to the habit of using footpaths to park mopeds on we spent most of the time walking on the road itself. We got a bit lost trying to find the hotel ( we didn’t really have a good set of directions or a proper address ) so we asked for directions from a local, but he seemed as confused as us. We saw sign that looked like the symbol for our hotel and headed there, but it turned out not to be our hotel, but they told us our hotel was a hundred metres further down the footpath ( this was a walking path alongside a creek ). So we arrived at the hotel at 2:10pm and checked in ( Floral Hotel Puyue Creek Homestay (Yangshuo West Street Lijiang Branch ), $138 for 1 night, no breakfast ). We had booked a room on the 4th floor, and we didn’t realise that there was no lift in the building and no air-conditioning in the common areas, so we had to lug our bags up the stairs in 35°C to our room ( Room 401 ). Rested for a bit. Interesting room in the roof of the hotel, with small balcony. The hotel in general felt a bit shabby ( a little rough around the edges, more like a SE Asian hotel ), but ok.
Out for a walk at 2:45pm, went to McDonalds for sundae’s then to West Street and down to the river. West Street is the main shopping/bar/restaurant street in town, and has a very ‘party town’ feel to it, with lots of souvenir stores, restaurants that become nightclubs after dark, massage shops and a lot of hawkers yelling into microphones to get your attention. I immediatley took a bit of a dislike to the town; not really our kind of place. It felt a bit like a Las Vegas version of a traditional Chinese town, but with a lot of rough edges. Very much a town for the tourists.
We walked down West Street back down to the river where there were some cormorant rafts and people being photographed in dresses. The widely photographed cormorant rafts were traditionally by fishermen on the river, but the ones tied up here are very much for tourists to be photographed with ( for a price ) not for fishing. The cormorants are used to dive into the river and catch the fish and then return to the raft and drop them into a basket. The birds do this because of a mixture of training/reward but also because ( I believe ) the cormorants have a small rope put around their necks to stop them swallowing the fish they catch. None of the cormorants we saw had a rope around their necks as they were purely for show.
We walked back through the north part of town, bought supplies and back to hotel at 4pm. I went up to the roof deck at sunset to photograph a pagoda sitting on top of a nearby hill.
Out for tea at 6:30pm, found a restaurant on West St ( Y 138 for 2 dishes and a big beer ). We sat outside and watched the people streaming past, with roaming trinket sellers, and then watched every scatter when a heavy shower passed through. We had some issues with the payment through WeChat; most Chinese load money into their WeChat account and this restaurant was set up for this, and as we couldn’t load money our account it would process the payment. We would up paying cash for the meal. We walked back to hotel via Starbucks for coffees ( Y60 ), arriving at 8pm.
About 10pm the noise level outside ramped up as the bars turned to nightclubs, which we could hear in our room, but we were tired so it didn’t keep us awake.
Zoomable Map ( pin is located on our hotel location )