Li River raft and Yangshou

Yesterday I went on the Li River bamboo raft trip and visited Yangshou. It was the most adventurous experience that I have had since I have been in China! We left around 9:30am and drove for close to two hours down this very rough back country road. The bus driver was hauling ass! We finally reached the place where our bamboo rafts were waiting for us. We hopped on and I ended up sitting next to this Chinese woman who was very sweet and we practiced her English and my Chinese for most of the trip. The Li River was absolutely beautiful. I was really lucky because the woman I sat next to spoke Chinese so when the man that was driving the raft would point out things in the scenery in Chinese she would check her dictionary and try to tell me what he said. We were on the river for about two hours and I took a ton of pictures that I will upload soon.

After a couple of hours we got to a place where we docked and they shuttled us onto these very interesting "buses". The bus basically looked like a glorified golf cart and we were off. Our driver was cruising along this really bumpy and narrow road and we were all hanging on for our life! At one point we had to stop for about 10 minutes because there was a fight between a guy in a car and a guy on a motorcycle ahead of us. We were only on these "buses" for about 20 minutes until we got to a paved road and caught a larger bus the rest of the way to Yangshou. We finally arrived in Yangshou around 2pm. I met a guy on the bus from Germany and a woman from Uruguay and ended up spending the rest of the day with them. We went to a restaurant that was recommended in the Lonely Planet and had lunch. It felt like I was in the twilight zone when we walked up because every single person sitting in the restaurant was white.

After we finished lunch we decided to check out Moon Hill. We ended up catching this crazy little motor cart out to Moon Hill and holding on for our lives the whole way. It was an experience I will never forget but we all agreed when we got there that we were definitely taking a taxi back! Moon Hill was alright, it was a really nice hike up which I enjoyed but I felt like the view from Die Cai Hill in Guilin was better. I did take some pictures and will put them up soon. We got down the hill around dusk and there was a taxi waiting for a British family that had been on the top of the hill when we got up there. The driver said he would come back for us but he was going to charge us 50RMB. We waited for more than 40 minutes but were getting impatient so we hopped on a van that was passing by and they guy agreed to take us back to Yangshou for 40RMB. He dropped us off at the bus station and the German guy and I headed back on the 8:30pm bus to Guilin. It was a painful ride for me because I had to pee the whole time, I thought I was going to have to run screaming out of the bus but I made it to Guilin and relieved myself just in time!

I hung out with Daniel (the German guy) for a bit and had a great conversation with a woman from Israel and then I hit the hay. I actually slept through the night last night which was amazing. Today I am just going to take it easy and do some light exploring of Guilin and then tomorrow I go on a trip to the rice fields. Tomorrow night I am back on another train, this time to Guangzhou.