Meagan's World: Li Jiang River Boat Ride to Yangshuo

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Li Jiang River Boat Ride to Yangshuo

After hanging out in Guilin for a few days, we took a river boat cruise that dropped us off in Yangshuo. Yangshuo is a little town near Guilin that is surrounded on all sides by Karst formations...they loom in the background so you can never quite forget where you are. The boat cruise was nice although slow and very touristy. There were like 10 other river boat cruises doing the same things as us! It was gorgeous even though the weather was gray and gloomy, and we got some spectacular views of the scenery. While we were on the boat someone was selling snake wine, which I didn't get because it was relatively expensive, but I did manage to get a picture.

The boat dropped us off in Yangshuo, and we settled into the Paradise Hotel, which was nice. It had pictures of Clinton and Bush Sr, both of whom have stayed there before! Yangshuo is the cutest little town...it had a very backpacker -ey sort of feeling, filled with travellers from all over the world. There is tons of stuff to do in Yangshuo and it is CHEAP so you can stay a while if you are interested. People come to go rockclimbing, rafting, hiking, and biking.

On our first afternoon we went on a bike tour with a local guide named Tao Ping. She was very nice and cheerful, and told us lots of information, of which I only understood about 10%. She spoke "English", but it was very difficult to understand. The bike ride was fabulous...we rode through farms and along little rivers through the Karst formations. It is fun to ride a bike, it made me miss Davis!

While we were in Yangshuo, we ate a ton of Beer Fish, which is a local specialty. It was delicious and pretty healthy too! It is basically a whole fish steamed in beer. It tastes great, not exactly like beer, but more of a rich taste. I love steamed fish...I think we must have eaten our weight in fish while we were in China!