Cyndi was a godsend. She took us under her wing and protected us from all the pitfalls of travelling through China during a national holiday. The main one being that most hotels won’t accept foreigners, even those with previous bookings, unless they agree to paying three times the regular price. So when we finally found our hotel, I should say Cyndi and her boyfriend found our hotel, we were greeted by a hotel owner with the avariciousness of an Australian politician. The man spoke no english and wasn’t willing to look at us, let alone negotiate us. Enter guardian angel, Cyndi. Rolling up her sleeves, she then spent the next three quarters of an hour fiercely defending us and our previous booking. It seemed that the man had made a mistake posting the booking for that price and only until after we’d booked did he realise that we’d be staying during a national holiday. So naturally, he deserved a lot more money for the trouble of putting up with these seemingly white, and therefore rich, devils. After another half an hour of smug arrogance we were getting nowhere and ended up changing our plans all together, deciding to stay for one night only and then head back to Guilin a day early. Cyndi and her boyfriend were also staying for only one night and also heading to Guilin the next day and being Chinese tourist newborns, we weren’t quite ready to leave the protective covering of Mother Cyndi. 

It’s worth mentioning that Cyndi’s english was so good because her father is married to an Australian expat, who incidentally also gave Cyndi her english name. She’s a singer with ambitions to move to London and study her masters of singer/songwriting there. She studied singing in China and met her partner at the same uni, I forget his name but it meant golden child (I think), we shared with her that that was how Richelle and I met, and true to the superstitious nature of the Chinese, saw this as a sign that all this was meant to be. Not being ones to deny the glory of the moment, we definitely agree with her.

After the dynamic duo left us, we then hurried to our rooms, changed our clothes and headed up the first mountain before the sunset. Again, it was another scorching day but we pumped our legs for the prize that awaited us – a view of the entire valley, covered head to toe in golden light and equally golden terraced rice fields, villages bursting with guesthouses and ant-size tourists crawling over every inch. Drenched in sweat we then headed back down the mountain. We expected to spend the next couple of hours searching for vegetarian food in vain. But even though the english in this part of China isn’t spectacular it wasn’t hard and we found a decent restaurant with a heap of food for the vegetable inclined. 

The next day we donned our head torches and started ascending the neatly tiled path in the dark. When you’re walking in the dark, long distances and big climbs aren’t as long or big and we zoomed up the mountain to the highest viewing point of Longsheng. After a few wrong turns and some help from the locals we, and a few hundred other tourists, made it to the top. The splendour of the sun has a universal effect on people, as the crowd was awed into silence.

Now we only had to spend the next hour or so gazing into the sun, watching it rise and change the colour of the undulating valleys before us. Although, man has carved his place all over these mountains, it doesn’t feel invasive. Birds, bugs, dogs and life can be seen thriving in and out of the fields. I was struck with a sense of harmony. Ignoring the thousands of tourists converging on the spot, of course. 

We headed back to the guesthouse and waited for Cyndi to take us to Guilin.