Fantasy Landscapes in the South

I'm about to leave Guanxi province in Southern China, after a few days in Yangshuo, near to Guilin. This is a big tourist area, attracting 50 million visitors a year, most of them Chinese. It's geared up for people who are staying anything up to a week, with loads of things to look at and do, including bamboo rafting (check), caves/mud baths/spa (check), cycling (check), cookery classes, Tai Chi classes, kayaking, climbing, hiking, a light show spectacular (check), and loads of clubs and bars. So that probably explains why I'm feeling quite tired, even though I was expecting these few days to be a chill-out, with just the scenery to enjoy.   The mud bath spa was an accident. I thought I was buying a ticket to Moon Hill, a mountain with a hole at the top you can look through at the fantastic karst peak landscape. But in fact I had a ticket for some underground caves. Not wanting to waste my money, I went for it, even though it involved entering the cave wearing nothing but swimwear and a hard hat with no real clue what was going to happen. In the end it was quite good fun, with me and another solo traveller (Chinese) being the only two in our group willing to immerse ourselves in the mud bath. There are photographs to prove it. After that you get cleaned up and soak in an underground spa for a while. All rather unexpected.   Eventually I made it to Moon Hill, which provided the best view of this unique landscape. What they call the karst peaks are perhaps like how a child would draw a mountain - straight up, round on top, stright down the other side. Covered in thick forest, they stretch away as far as the eye can see, layer on layer of them, the spaces between them filled with rice paddies and winding rivers. It really is like something out of a fairytale. You only get this view by climbing right to the top of the peak, by means of the path clearly marked "no entry". It was a very well-used path.   Cycling here is good, as the land between the peaks is flat and there are numerous small roads. However, the road I took was pretty much jammed up with enormous tourist buses parking and blocking the way. It's almost frightening to see how much domestic tourism has expanded here, and to consider how much more potential for growth there is.   The light show was choreographed by the person who did the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. It took place on a lagoon surrounded by floodlit peaks, and had a cast of 600. Very spectacular, even without being able to follow the sory. At one point, a long row of dancers holding hands formed a chain across the lagoon on floating pontoons. The chain got longer and longer and double-backed on itself, until there must have been a couple of hundred people. They were all wearing costumes lit with strips of small white lights, which was all you could see. Suddenly all the costume lights went out and stage was in darkness. Then only some of the dancers' lights came on, then off. Different dancers were lit up then disappeared again. I would love to know how that was done. Then all the lights went off and yellow floodlights came on, so that you could see the dancers properly. The effect was as if they had all disappeared and been replaced with a different set of dancers. Amazing.   Off to Kunming now, in Yunnan province in the south west to visit some old minority towns in the mountains and maybe do some hiking. Best wishes to all!