Guilin and the Li River

By the time I reached my accommodation in Guilin it was around midnight. I quickly organised a trip down the river to my 3 night stay in a village amongst the karst mountains. There, I would take in the scenery and get my bearings after a frantic start to the trip. Eyes drooping, bed beckoning, but I needed to cash up first. ATM across the road they say. Standing at the edge of a pitiful excuse for a zebra crossing I surveyed a dimly lit 4 lane expanse with cars, bikes and lorries coming left right and center. "You want me to cross that! But I don't even have a high visibility vest!". My brain had finally flipped. (Moments later, the higher cortical function centre kicked in..... "Did you just say high visibility vest?".

The next morning I boarded a bamboo raft and spent a few hours making it down the river towards Yangshuo. It was quite misty, the karst mountains looking washed out, but impressive none the less. Note the raft's PVC "bamboo" piping.

We pulled up at some point to be unceremoniously handed over to villagers hawking mandarins and ornamental ducks. Spying the possibility of food under one gazebo whilst marveling at the PC, printer and digital SLR set up under another (how do they power that down here??) I followed my nose to a much needed feed.

What followed was tuck tuck, bus and some kind of bicycle ute transfer before I finally reached the village of Chao Ling.

My favorite view.

And a village it was. Mud brick homes, livestock, chickens, ducks. The neighbours were having some kind of celebration. People coming and going, occassional bursts of music.. a composition involving a clarinet like wind instrument, cymbals and drums.

The sensible thing would have bee to pull up a hammock and say Ahhh! I've arrived! Instead I'd agreed to meet a fellow bamboo rafter in town for dinner. I extended the invite to my roomates and found myself, after a bit of umming and aaaahing, riding the 4km into Yangshuo town down unlit rural Chinese roads, sans helmet and high visibility vest.
We sat down to a much anticipated meal and beer (585ml 'stubbies'). I jumped at the chance to try an authentic szechuan dish but was sorely disappointed. My fellow szechuan loving friends - what chillies there were, were inedible, and the heat they tried create by drowning all the ingredients in pepper. A visit to Szechuan house will definitely be a high priority as soon as I get back. One of the other diners was advised that he should order a pork dish, as he was too skinny and it would fatten him up (example 2).

The trip home on the bike was peaceful and otherworldly. Riding through mist, sucking in the smells, frogs croaking. Magic. We rolled down the laneway past our neighbours who were still at it, but significantly more beer infused. The repetitive tune started and stopped abruptly and was now randomly punctuated with "howwwwwwwwwwwww". I could only guess at the significance.