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HELLO! Its been a bit and boy a lot of fun has taken place. We left off in Kunming. Here we decided that another 30 hour train ride would be more than we could mentally handle, so we booked a pretty cheap flight to Guilin. Chinese airports are lovely and pretty easy to navigate..and you can buy giant yams in the terminal! It is here that we met our new friend Luis from Portugal. We thought maybe he was a drug trafficer when security refused to let him pass and escorted him away but it turns out he just had the wrong ticket! Whew. ( HI LUIS!)
We landed in Guilin and took a bus and then a taxi to a hostel. We got our door stuck and Luis broke the door knob off. The hostel staff came with a hammer and screw driver and beat the shit out of the door until the deadbolt popped off and then they gave us a new room. teeeheee.
The next morning, I bought a coconut with a straw in it and enjoyed the sweetest drink I have ever had...mmmmm.
Following our "Rough Guides" advise, the three of us shared a taxi to a little fishing village about an hour away. There, we found a fishing boat and worked out a sweet deal. For 400 Yuan (this is less than the cost that the mega cruise lines in Guilin charge for one person) the three of us would ride down the Li River to Xingping on a traditional fishing boat.
This ride was one of the absolute highlights to our Chinese experience. It was breathtaking and totally exciting. We were the only people on the river besides the fisherman and the scenery was stunning. We sat on the front of the boat and just took it all in. There were water buffalo's everywhere and we got very close to them...they are so cute and oddly enough the only animal that the Chinese don't eat, mainly because they need them to till the rice paddies. Also, there were quite a few commerant fisherman out. This is so cool. If you don't already know here is how it works. These fisherman train a bunch of commerants (diving birds) by tying a string around their neck. They send them out to catch fish in their mouths and the string prevents them from swallowing the fish. The birds bring the fish back to the raft and cough em up into the fishermans bucket. The birds get to eat every 7th fish they catch. Then they serve em up fried for your dining delight.
We arrived just north of Xingping and there was another boat...a bamboo raft (that's right, bamboo tied together with more bamboo...picture Swiss Family Robinson in China) that would take us the rest of the way for 20 Yuan ($2.75) for all of us. That in my humble opinion was a scary ride. Carrie, miss I love the water, enjoyed the trip immensly, despite the water gushing up between the bamboo floor boards. OH, did I mention the seats were not attached and were held together by bamboo nails?
We hiked up this big ass hill to get to the road in the middle of nowhere, where lo and behond a rickshaw/mini pickup truck thing pulled up. For less than a dollar we all hopped in and he took us to the bus station where a local bus was waiting for us. We got some ice cream and hit the road to Yangshuo.
I would like to mention that this was the "perfect" travel day. Everything flowed, everything was cheap and non-touristy and beautiful. Like a well oiled machine. This will be important later for comparison purposes :)
previous travel blog entry
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