During our bamboo raft down the Yulong, we had seen a hot air balloon high in the sky at sunset, and had thought what a cool thing to do - especially in such a beautiful place as Yangshuo. So after a couple of days we decided to splash out and venture high into the skies. It was fantastic yet scary all at the same time. I had to force myself not to think of the various things that could go wrong (rules and regulations for most things in China leave a lot to be desired and are far from those in the western world). There was not a lot of room to manoevre around in the little basket: there was myself, Martin, our pilot, Sammy, and in the corners, four massive bottles of gas. Yangshuo's scenery is amazing at ground level, but it is even more stunning from the air. Beautiful greens and yellow of rice paddies in harvest, the rivers weaving their way through the terrain, and the towering pinnacles reaching out of the ground to nip at our ankles! All just made for a surreal experience.
The gas burners controlled by the pilot would rudely interrupt the peace and quiet, and make me jump. As we got to 1000m (3000ft) it was a little hazy and visibility wasn't as good. Apart from the scenery, for me the best bit was actually coming into land. We made several attempts at landing, but drifted off course, but we didn't mind - this prolonged our one hour's flying time! When we missed a landing, the waiting ground crew would have to hop back in the truck to the new location that the pilot would radio in. It was all quite exciting and as we got lower and lower we could see the villages and people working in their fields, and wave to the children who, of course, would get very excited at the prospect of a hot air balloon about to land in their back yard. So as we tried to avoid the bamboo treetops, orchards of tangerines and rice paddies, the kids would chase us clambering over sometimes rough terrain, screaming and yelling. When we finally landed we were greeted by about ten kids all beside themselves with excitement not only about the balloon, but that we were foreigners ...with cameras. And digital ones at that so that they could see how they looked on camera! The whole experience was brilliant and it was well worth it. * Mush
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