More YangShuo

   I started my second full day in YangShuo with a nice walk around the quiet countryside around the hostel. It was a beautiful morning, there were lots of locals out tending to vegetables, watching their children play and on motorcycles heading into town, a nice relief after a very loud night of fireworks for the new year.

A view of the hostel from the other side of the valley.

Left, this was a HUGE noisy pig in the neighborhood. Right, vegetable garden

(one of SO many we saw in every open patch of land).

   Once I got back to the hostel Trisha and Shawn had finished breakfast and we decided on what we were going to do for the day...bamboo rafting on the Yulong River (a tributary to the famous Li River)! We arranged a taxi to pick us up and take us to the river...we would have biked but none of us were able to sit on a bike due to the long bike ride and uncomfortable bikes seats from the day before.

Trisha and Shawn checking out all the bamboo rafts.

OMG, these old ladies really wanted to sell us squirt guns and
plastic bags for our feet (1 RMB for 2 plastic bags). Why are there
always these tacky things at every turn in China? We didn't buy
any guns, sadly.

Left, Trisha and Shawn purchased the bags for their feet. I, on the other-hand, had my

handy waterproof Danner boots on (boots courtesy of Donald). Right, our raft "captain".

   Each raft only held 2 people so Shawn stepped up and said he would ride by himself. He got on the first raft and off he went. Check out the video below:

   So squirt guns were not the only thing that was tacky on this boat ride. In the picture above on the left, there is a women selling beer from a cooler. It seemed that she sits here all day to sell cheap beer at a 400% mark up. She wanted 20rmb for a beer...since it was past noon and offered to him Shawn try to buy a beer for 10rmb (all the $ he had on him) but the women wouldn't sell. If you zoom in on the above picture on the right you can see Shawn trying to haggle with the beer vendor.

What you can't see is that I have a death grip on Trisha's knee so that I
don't fall off the bamboo raft.

Even on the river you could get cell reception, as
our raft guys is showing in this picture.

   At 5 different points along the river there were these mini man-made waterfalls (for a lack of a better term). They were not meant to be pretty but to slow the river down (or so I assume). Above is a video of Trisha and I going down one of the small ones. There were bigger ones but I had to put away my camera in fear of getting it wet. While going down each one of these we had to hang on tight and lift our feet so they wouldn't get wet. On a later one our raft dove deep enough in the water that it almost went up to the seats that we were sitting on, luckily only my one pant leg got wet.

Water buffalo along the way.

This picture is for Donald. Check out the water
proof Danner boots that I have on.

The below video is just kinda funny, worth watching!

Locals washing clothes down at the river. Do you now feel lucky for modern conveniences?

There was a camel and pony to ride at the end of our trip but
I didn't feel inclined to go for another animal ride.

   We had paid our same taxi driver to wait for us at the end point of our raft ride. We had no problems finding him so that we could have him drop us off in town. We were all itching to eat and do some supporting of the local merchants.

I'm including this for Shawn. He's a big music buff and really thought
this guy was talented on his guitar. We gave him a little cash in support.

Shopping in YangShuo...

These fried stuffed dough things were AMAZING!

There were a few shops selling these beautiful hand-woven cotton pieces.
I got a really cool one to use as a throw in our McLellan home.

Some fresh tofu, served spicy with pickled beans.

Check out all the amazing karsts in the background.

   Once the sun started getting going down the temperature had started to drop very quickly. We started to head back on foot towards the hostel. Since were all getting chilled to the bone a conversation started about whether we were prepared to head to our second destination, Longsheng. The elevation there would be a lot higher making the temperature a lot colder and we were just not sure that we would stay warm enough to have fun. It was decided pretty quickly that staying another day in YangShuo would be a better choice, especially since our hostel turned out to be SO great. All we had to do was confirm that the hostel still had room for us to stay an extra night.

   There was still a lot of celebrating happening everywhere for the New Year, celebrating using tons of firecrackers. It was so smoky on our walk home that Trisha had to use a mask to block out some of the particulate in the air. She looks a little scary in the picture b/c of the mask but there were plenty of locals that looked the same way. Since it was getting darker we were able to see that the karsts around the city were lit up. They looked pretty cool...

   The below video is a little dark but shows the bus ride we took up a pretty big hill. The "bus" was a little open sided truck with 3 rows of seats. It moved at a pretty good clip and was a great local experience.

The "bus" that we caught up the big hill for 1rmb each.

We were able to secure another night at the hostel. Good news at the end of a good day!

YangShuo, a day of bike riding!

  Our hostel was amazing. The staff was super friendly, helpful and kept the place very clean. There was also a restaurant/lounge that was attached to the hostel that served us some of the best Chinese food that I have had so far on this 5 month adventure. Having the restaurant there was really convenient since the hostel itself was about 1.75 miles out of town. So on our first morning we filled up with fresh yogurt/fruit/muesli and banana porridge then went to talk to the front desk staff about some of our options for things to do. One thing that we were all excited about was renting bikes and riding around. We weren't going to let the cold, wet weather deter us. Here's the tour that we took:

Shawn rolling is pants up for this long wet ride!

Left, riding into town. Right, Trisha checking out our route.

This goes out to you, Donald (that's a heart that I'm making with my hands, FYI) !
Check out the karsts in the background (Check out the link to learn more about karsts).

Yes, that is actual bamboo being used as scaffolding.

Right, One of the roads that we biked down was a muddy pot-hole mess. I think that 

I made it out the cleanest of the three of us.

We passed a few tiny villages along the way. The rest was all countryside.

This man was out walking his water buffalo.

    We made the ride a little longer b/c we wanted to see the big Banyan tree which was planted in the Shui Dynasty about 1400 yrs ago. I had never seen a tree this old and honestly didn't know one that old could still exist. Of course the tree ended up being in a scenic area, meaning that the government has privatized the area and now a fee must be payed to enter. But 20rmb each would be worth it, right?

Trisha looking like her mom in this photo and heading to see the tree!

That clump of tree in the middle of the photo is all the one giant Banyan tree.

This is the trunk of the tree, it is being decorated for the new year.
Fireworks are also being set off next to the tree, not sure the reasoning.

It was funny that there was a barrier and multiple signs stating "forbidden entry"

yet there were about a dozen people walking around under the tree, pinning

new year banners to the tree and setting off lots of firecrackers.

Of course I found the one guy selling some food. He was selling
mochi stuffed with sweet spices and sugar. Delicious!!

    This next part made me think of Donald b/c he would have shaken his head in embarrassment b/c I managed to find the one water buffalo that I could pay to ride. I've never ridden any kind of animal before, not even a horse (maybe a mini pony at a county fair when I was small). Jumping into riding a water buffalo bare-back was crazy, I could feel all his muscles moving as he walked. I gathered quite the crown during my 30 seconds on this creature :)

Wahoo!

    After coming down from my high of being on the buffalo I was was starting to get cold. It seemed that Trisha and Shawn had been cold for awhile so we decided that getting back on the rides would warm us back up. It seemed that we were really close to Moon Hill, one of the most famous karst in Yangshuo. Off we rode...

By the time we got this area we were still cold so getting off our bikes
did not seem like a good idea. It also meant that we didn't want to pay
the fee to get into the scenic area to get a better picture so you have to
look through the trees to see the cave at the top of the hill.

It was all SO beautiful.

   The bike ride from Moon Hill was about 4 miles from the town center. It seemed like a 40 mile ride back b/c we were still cold and we all had very sore rear ends from riding on the rock hard seats for 3 hours already. Shawn was in the most pain and I think if it was possible he would have paid big bucks to just catch a ride back and not have to ride the bike back. We all made it back in one piece and stopped at the main shopping street to do some people watching and grab a meal.

Left, the entrance of the pedestrian only shopping area, West Street.

There was a HUGE New Year celebration set up, camera crews and all. Apparently,
the town dinner was going to be televised. We picked a restaurant on this block
so we could watch the action.

Beer fish is a local dish, fresh fish from the Li River
cooked in beer. Shawn and I were pretty excited (Trisha
does really eat fish).

Clockwise from bottom left. Lemon chicken, beer catfish, mushroom soup,
steamed buns with preserved vegetables. Everything was good, my only
complaint was that the catfish were so small there wasn't much meat. Each fish
 was about 7inches long and weren't gutted, that sort of creeped me out.

The aftermath.

Then we huffed it back to our hostel.

Yangshuo Village Retreat.

Topped the day off with another great meal at the hostel.
Dry sauteed green beans, Belgian fries (the hostel is owned
by a Belgian couple), Curried potatoes and Sichuan style beef ribs.

A great first day in Yangshuo!