Yangshuo:Day Eleven

Today we took a boat down the Li River. The ride was very scenic and we were going along the Karst Mountains. The term, Karst, is describing what type of mountains they are. The mountains are the peaky mountains that are sometimes used as landscapes to paint and take pictures of. We think they are beautiful. The climate is almost tropical and the plants/trees growing on the mountain side are very green and lush. The boat ride was about four hours long and most of the time we spent standing on the deck watching the mountains go by. As I said before, people really want to sell you things. Below is the seating area with glass windows and comfortable seats. So, as soon as we get going, people come along side our boat and try to sell us tourist trinkets. These people are on traditional bamboo boats that they use to fish, sell, and travel. To sell their things, these people take a rope and hook it onto our boat to make the bamboo steady. To get them to go away, you ignore them. This is more difficult than you would think. In America, we are taught to speak to people who speak to you and it is rude to ignore them. Not here. When we got to Yangshuo, we took a taxi to our hotel. Yangshuo is a very rural place and a lot of farming is done. The farming is done in traditional ways. We saw people using water buffalo to plow and we have seen a lot of rice paddies. Rice paddies are the fields where rice grows. It turns out that our hotel was very green. By green, I mean environmentally friendly. When we got to our hotel, it was only about one o’clock in the afternoon. We took a stroll down the street and to a place where it said we could hike up to Moon Hill. The picture of a hole in the hill is Moon Hill. We joked that is was the Arch of China. The bad thing, is that we had followers on our hike. Two old women went along with us and tried to get us to buy their things. They came along ALL THE WAY UP THE HILL WITH US. We didn’t want them to come all the way with us. The hike was supposed to be a leisure hike and take about a hour and a half. I am not a fan of walking fast and up stairs on a steep hill. Just to see if we could get the women away, we went up and down the hill in about forty-five minutes. That night we went to the Light Show. This is an amazing show that was made and directed by the man who did the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics. It was amazing. One of the parts was a bunch of men on their bamboo boats working with five red pieces of fabrics. The fabrics were about six feet tall and as long as a football field. There were also a lot of people with costumes that could light up. Synchro people, I think that Spain’s costumes might have been like this. The women, who had the costumes, would light up in a wave or make it seem like one person was walking among them. The next day we will be going on bamboo rafts on the Yulong River.

Lianne