Day 12: Guilin to Yangshou

Today was a very busy day. We rode down the Li River on 3 separate occasions, all had lovely views the mountain formations. The scenery here is breathtaking. I often feel like I'm taking the same picture over and over again but it's still an amazing shot. We started off the morning with a quick tour of the Li River inside Guilin. It was misty but the background still looked amazing.

The Chinese like to use their imagination a lot, and associate/name rocks after what they look like. This one looks like a person's fist.

This rock is very famous in Guilin. It's called Elephant Trunk Hill because it resembles an elephant drinking from the confluence of the Li and Peach Blossom rivers, or so my guide book says.

We took a lot of pictures here. =)

This is a view of part of Guilin I took after climbing a hill; It doesn't do justice to how lovely Guilin truly is but you can get a good idea of what all the peaks look like. The area is just surrounded by them. I would think that it'd take a while to become tired of this beautiful scenery.

After the boat ride, we had a tea tasting and then lunch. It was dim sum! Delicious!

Then we had a bus ride towards Yangshuo, stopping at a village/tourist attraction for another boat ride and some crazy shows. This place was geared towards tourists, with lots of showy minority dances and a lot of things to sell.

The peaks in the area were amazing though, so I forgave them for having selling stalls at every corner we turned.

=)

Here is monkey, finding another monkey to play with!

And here is my foreign exchange student, Stephanie, posing in front of the village.

After the village, we went to another boat ride down the Li River. People pushed us on rafts using sticks, and the tour guide made us sing songs. It was quite entertaining. Here I am, posing as if I could have pushed our huge raft down the river.
There was also a man fishing using cormorant birds. The birds are tied to the raft and kept hungry so they will be able to hunt fish. Their necks are also tied so that when they catch a fish, it says in their throat and can be "easily" retrieved by squeezing the neck. Quite inhumane but traditional of this region.

We spent the night in Yangshuo. It's such a backpacker's paradise. I saw so many foreigners, including a quite attractive German man with his precious 5 year old son. Many of the Chinese locals wanted to pose with the boy. It was pouring down rain and we saw the boy playing with his umbrella while trailing behind his dad. Then he lost some sort of button and his dad came back and yelled at him severely in German. It was quite the scene. :(

We had a good night, wandering around Yangshuo. I bought some lychees and movies. =) That's all for now!

-b