Guilin & Yangshuo

Just before I got bamboo'zled!
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We arrived in Guilin by a lovely quick flight, No more trains for us .... for now !!! Checked into the hostel and roamed about Guilin.  Guilin and Yangshuo are famous for the beautiful scenery of Karst Hills.  They are random hills that seem to spring up from the gound made out of limestone.  On the second night we went to see a chinese acrobat and ballet show.  The ballet part wasnt too great but the acrobatics were pretty cool !  Early the next morning we were picked up to take the boat down the Li river to Yangshuo.  This is what I was looking forward to.  The scenery is stunning but there were loads and loads of boats, kind of took away from it all a bit.

Our Chinese Gondalier
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Yangshuo used to be a sleepy villiage in chinese terms, (its still twice the size if not three times the size of navan !) but now its cottoned onto the tourist trade and the center of town is all market stalls and pubs!  On our second day there we started it off with a tai chi lesson with the hostel owner and then we rented bikes there to go out the the Dragon bridge where we were told we'd see real rural china.  I was a bit sceptical but this was the real deal, We headed off with an american couple and a german couple and after we biked about 8 kms, there was still no sign of getting to the dragon bridge but we were being followed by illegal guides who graciously kept pointing us in the right direction.  another 3 Kms into the bike ride along very bumpy roads they guided us down onto a dirt track in between fields and then through farms, we were wondering where we were going to end up but it truly was real china.  We had little kids as us what our names were and then try to sell us oranges and the views were so beautiful that I didnt realise that I was cycling sooo far !! We did eventually get to dragon bridge and then the games started on haggling a fare for the bamboo ride down the river.  We eventually got them down to 100rmb per couple and headed out on the boats.  They aren't the safest looking things and with the two of us, the dude that was pushing us along and 2 bikes i was sure we were going to go in.

there was a lot of shouting going on and I looked around and I got rammed by another bamboo raft

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Once we got comfortable then he pushed us over a weir, our one nearly went over sideways and i was sure we were going into the water, but we were fine so i thought that i would risk it and walked to the tip of our raft for a picture - everyone was doing it and when i was on my way back I thankfully crawled and there was a lot of shouting going on and i looked around and I got rammed by another bamboo raft, everyone thought I was a goner but I hung on and didnt get wet thank god but have lovely big bruises all along my thigh.  If I had have walked I think dale would still be laughing at me going into the river !

Dale Pulling the raft over a weir
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We have soo many pictures from this part of the trip that I don't think we'll get the beauty of it across but would highly recommend it to anyone !