Sweet sailing on the Li River and wet, wet weather

Thursday, September 9, 2010

• Sailing on the Li River – spent just over four hours cruising down the Li River; absolutely stunning scenery; Ricky pointed out some highlights, like the 9 horses, etc; for some you really had to use your imagination to see the images
• Met a nice girl from Switzerland traveling on her own in China
• French couple sat next to us so dad was able to communicate
• Got to Yangshuo and had to walk 20 minutes in the humidity to our hotel
• Checked in and got our laundry together
• Picked up by Ricky in an electric cart which first took us to the laundry mat then into the countryside of Yangshuo; good thing we had Ricky because I think it would have been hard for dad to describe that we wanted a dark wash and a white wash
• Drove around the countryside in the electric cart; stunning scenery
• Ricky took us to a local food market, so smelly with lot of live birds and ducks, even I didn’t like it
• Collected our laundry and walked back to hotel
• 30 minutes to get ready for dinner, then Ricky took us to a local place to try beer fish.  We see the fish being pulled out of the water and weighed.  Talk about fresh!
• Starts raining and we have tickets to Impressions of Yangshuo; take an electric cart, lots of traffic
• Given ponchos and plastic bags for our feet
• Rained for the majority of the show and as soon as the show ended it started pouring.  Raining so hard as we make a 15-minute walk to the electric cart.  Sloshing through puddles.  SO WET!
• Get back to the hotel and can’t wait to get out of our wet clothes.  No good dessert at the hotel, so we ended up with chocolate and Oreos.

Soaking story: It was challenging to enjoy the Impressions of Yangshuo through the rain.  My head was poking out of my poncho as I struggled to keep my hair dry.  When the rain let up, everyone would remove their hoods and as soon as it started again, they were back on.  Dad and I kept looking at each other and smiling about the experience.  When the show ended, the sky broke and it started pouring.  It was some of the hardest rain I’ve seen in a while and we had to walk through it for 15 minutes to get to the electric cart.  Since we didn’t have umbrellas, I was holding on to my hood and water was dripping down my arm and neck into my shirt.  Part of my shirt got exposed through my poncho and leg guards (is that what you’d call them?) and got totally soaked.  Dad and I were holding on to each other and trying to laugh since there was nothing we could do.  Time and time again we mentioned how miserable my mom would have been in this situation and that we were glad she didn’t come to China (this is already a recurring theme after the first week.  When we finally made it to the hotel, we peeled ourselves out of the wet ponchos and disposed of them at the entrance, where of course we ran into the Swiss girl from the boat.  A long, wet evening.