- 9.30 am Saturday Morning – Bike Asia Mechanic Pengsai leads the procession out of town, on a tricycle weighed down
Pengsai leads the festival hauling giant speakers through town with Kashmir by Led Zeplin making sure its a blast off.
by enormous speakers, belting out Kashmir by Led Zeplin.
- 10.00 – Fire crackers, 30 metres in length are lit to scare away bad spirits and signalled the start of our Disco de Wheels – a DJ’d silent disco on bikes that immediately had fifty festival using coordinated dance moves to cycle their way through the bamboo forest and rice paddies on our secret route to Dragon Bridge.
- 12.30 pm -Pretty Red Guards hand out chilled face towels, and 1960’s style ice creams as we approach our jade Dragon riverside lunch spot. 1970’s funkadelia becomes 1990’s buddha Bar and chilled Ibiza tunes as DJ Ke takes over from DJ Foreman of Bike Aways. Beer, water melon and the most delicious Guilin Mifen noodles refresh the team as we drink in the eye candy of an 800 year old Chinese bridge.
- 1.30pm – Sweeping rice paddy vistas and the surrounding dragon tooth karst mountainsmake eye candy paired to the ear candy magic as we cycle to Terry’s charmingly renovated traditional mud brick village home stay and festival venue in the middle of the Yangshuo countryside.
Red guards hand out cold towels, and then a nostalgic slap across the face.
- 3.30 pm Terry welcomes us with berry and Sprite & rice wine festival cocktail, shows us to our rustic chic rooms, and gifts us with cold beers to take down to the river for swim in the golden afternoon light.
- 6 pm – International fly-in artist Jean Paul presents a pop up gallery of bike parts repurposed with meshed in photographs, whilst local artist William from the Chicken Shop on West Street, does a magnificent landscape canvass in front of our eyes.
- 7pm -Terry serves up a farmers feast – sour plum duck, sweet pork ribs, beer fish, chicken and bamboo, and many more dishes I have since forgotten.
- 8.30 pm – thanks for coming speeches by Scott from Bike Asia precede Retrophaze – our live band. They kick start the party with Purple Haze which is what the night becomes on Terry’s terrace . Comissioned for 1.5 hours they play for 3 as nobody will stop dancing and let them go home. Villages come and join the antics which continue late into the night.
- Sunday 9am – Morning walk in the misty karsts. Terry Li’s awesome breakfast, and a ride
Ear candy paired with eye candy is the idea behind our Disco de Wheels.
through the ancient villages behind Moonhill and along the Yulong River to Chao Long for a fantastic final countryside lunch.
This describes just a slice of the festival which stretches over 4 days with pre and post rides through Yangshuo’s most stunning landscapes.