Hi Everyone,

I am trying to decide between taking a motorized raft ride from Yangdi to Yangshou or taking a raft ride down the Yulong River.

I have read that the portion of the Li River from Yangdi to Yangshuo is the most scenic, but also read that the Yulong River ride is more relaxed and just as beautiful.

So here are my questions:

1) Which would you choose?
2) Are they sufficiently different from the other to justify doing both, or is that just duplicative?
3) Where do you start the ride on the Yulong River?

Thanks in advance for all of your help!

I would choose both if you have the time. The Li River ride is on a big river with islands to explore and big river cruisers passing by. The Yulong River is a quite peaceful river but the views are not the same IMO. You could ride a bike and have the raft carry both you and the bike back. Many starting points for the river ride but I cannot recall an exact location.

You might find this useful - from my family pictures you can see both the Li River and Yulong rafting plus other activities:http://khun-pook.smugmug.com/Other/C...9_qSWv9#P-1-10

Thanks - also has anyone been to Fuli? Is it worth a stop on our trip?

Thanks for your reply. Your pictures are beautiful!

So, on the trip from Yangdi to Yangshuo, does the boat stop at Xingping for you to walk around?

Also, at what point did you go to the Dragon Cave, was that a separate trip? And how far away is that from Yangshou? Do you recommend?

Thanks again!

Thank you for the compliment! I will go back and check my notes but in the mean time here's my trip report: http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...-longsheng.cfm

Kristinayee,

Sorry for the late reply. We found ourselves a guide on the first day in Yangshuo just by walking around the main road there. After that we told her what we would like to do and she arranged everything for us, including renting a van and driver. For the rafting trip our hotel, or Inn, arrange for a van to take us to Xingping and we did the rafting from there. If you want to be adventurous you could ask the driver to drop you off there and then pick you up somewhere else.

Most pople rented mountain bikes but we did not have a lot of time in Yanghsuo so we rented electric scooters. We were able to cover a lot of grounds and apart from touring the paddy fields we stop by Dragon cave as well. IMO a bit cheesy, the cave that is but it was nice and cool in there.

Let me know if you have any other question.

Hi Kristinayee

Last year we took the most amazing tour around the Yangshuo area. There is so much to see. We hired a guide to show us all the local things. Her name is Lilly Lu.

Be sure to see the Liu Sanjie Lights show - it's fantastic.

Take a scooter or mountain bike to go to the Dragon Bridge along the Yulong river and have lunch there at a farmers restaurant.

Take a mountain bike or scooter or hire a car to go to Liugong village along the famous Lijiang river. On the road to Liugong, the countryside is very nice and you can see farmers working in the fields. Liugong has some very old traditional houses about 600 years old, then take a raft back in the direction a of Yangshuo.

Yangdi along the Li River is considered to be the most scenic on the Li River.

If you get a chance - go to Ping'an - another amazing place. We hired a car with driver - took about 4 hours to get there, but well worth it.

If you need a local guide, contact Lilly:

+86 138 7737 3880
+86 135 5766 8442

She was lovely and so very inexpensive. Happy travelling!

Kristinayee

I meant to add, Lilly's email address is:

[email protected]

Thanks, actually, it's funny you mention Lilly. I was already in the midst of communicating with her since she is recommended alot on this board!

Thanks for the many suggestions!

Hanuman ... I just disocvered your post. Just want to ask you if you remember where did you rent the electric scooters and how much did they cost? didthey require a "driver's licence" to rent the scooters?

Thanks

I don't remember the price but it was not expensive. You can find them on the main tourist street of Yangshuo and we didn't have to show a driver's license. Note that they don't go very fast, about 25 kph only.

We just got them at the hotel, front desk helped us out. Our scooters were very fast, maybe up to 70kph. It was cheap, I think around 150 yuan for the day, about 23 USD.

Thanks. Normally I would not ride a scooter, in places like Vietnam (HCMC or Hanoi) or Shanghai etc. But Yangshuo seems quite "safe" if we stick to riding slow and in the country road.

We have a person in our party who does not go well with a bicycle so I thought may be we can rent electric bike so 2 people can use it, rather than renting a tandem bike.

A lot of people took bikes and rode them through the paddy fields while we took the scooters. Much easier and we didn't sweat much!

Yup, we took a bike and cycled around Yangshuo and Li river and it was just perfect, I'd do it again any time! On the contrary, when we took "bamboo" from Guilin to Yangshuo, we got ripped off terribly.

I wanted to add, we've just rented the bikes at the hostel we were staying - which was handy as we didn't need to pay the deposit and the prices were really reasonable with the bikes in not perfect, but okay condition.

I think electric scooter would be easier because you don't have to paddle!

However is it true that you can take a bicycle onto the bamboo raft, but not an electric scooter?

Some people have suggested riding a bike up along the river, and then take a bamboo raft back down. Maybe with a scooter one cannot do that?!

I dont think you will not be able to bring a scooter on the raft. If you have 2 days, do the Yangdi to Xingping bamboo raft one day (take a bus there) and on the other day rent scooters to see Li River area and Moon Hill. Also you do not need a guide for the Yangshuo region. It is very easy to get around.

Even easier than scooters, when we were there we hired a tuk-tuk for the day. Cannot remember the cost but it was cheap and there were great advantages, the best of which was a young driver who really got into the touring frame of mind and took us all sorts of places, both on and off the usual tourist list. And we didn't have to think about where to leave scooters when wandering around a village, farm or whatever.

NoFlyZone, what was the cost of the tuk-tuk with driver for the day? How did you select the driver?

TIA

Alan, Australia
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com/