Day 22 - Cruising the river: Xingping to Yangdi

Today we took the bus to Xingping, a quiet small town about an hours bus ride out of Yangshuo. The scenery on the bus ride was thoroughly enjoyable, though we were unsure if we would ever get there as the bus crawled out of the city, in the hope of picking up more passengers. Buses leave on a 'when full' basis around here!

In Xingping, we bartered our way onto a small boat for a cruise along the Li river. While waiting for our boat, we bought a yummy fried potato-stick each, from the street stall.

The trip lasted about one hour and 20 minutes, and we got to see more of the beautiful scenery that we have been bombarded with over the last three days while in Yangshuo. We would like to say we saw 'Yellow Cloth in Water', 'Lion watching the 9 horses', 'Tortoise climbing up the hill', 'Chicken-cage hill', 'Fish-tail peak', 'Grandpa watching apple', and 'Pen-holder peak', however what we really saw was an hour and 20 minutes worth of boat-cruising beauty - the Chinese seem to have a knack for naming much of the environment, the real question is whether or not you can pick what you're meant to be looking at. We noticed that even the Chinese on our boat had no idea what they were looking at - so we just sat back and enjoyed! Of note, the gorges we travelled through is the scene on the 20 RMB (the $20 dollar note). There were a number of different types of boats to choose from, from big cruiseships with restaurants to small bamboo rafts propelled by lawnmower engines. We opted for something in the middle!

On the way to the bus station, feeling upset at not being able to climb the mountains, Adam settled for climing some of the biggest bamboo we've seen so far, which proved relatively difficult, but fun nonetheless!

After catching the bus home to Yangshuo we lazed around until dinner time. We managed to remove 8kgs of weight from our bags, which we sent to the University for storage - Adam especially will appreciate the lighter pack tomorrow when we do our first mini-trek.

For dinner Liv had another delicious pancake from the corner, and Adam treated himself to the local delicacy at the market - Beer Fish. This episode involved Adam choosing a fish from a bowl, watching it 'prepared' for eating, seeing it cooked (with an astonishing amount of chilli, and of course the beer), and then spending the next hour attempting to chopstick the way through the whole fish on his plate!

On our way home we attempted to buy fruit for our dessert, but after feeling ripped off time and time again came home empty handed for the first time. Luckily Liv has a mango in reserve upstairs!

Off to pack now, and prepare for our onward journey from here - we plan to go to Longsheng tomorrow to experience the famous rice paddies of China.

Adlibing the water-ways of the Li River