This morning we woke up to birds singing outside our room in the farmhouse. A nice change from the sound of traffic. Every time I woke up in the night though I'd twitch, imagining monster spiders all over me. On the bright side, it's so nice and mild here! No chill in the air whatsoever, and above 20 degrees. Apparently its the first not-rainy day in a really long time, we got lucky. The workers here are super helpful too. After a bit of breakfast we hopped on our hotel's bikes and cycled in the direction of yangshuo. We got a little lost. We cycled along a muddy dirt road through the small village surrounding our farmhouse. People were working in rice fields surrounding the stunning karst peaks. There were oxen roaming around and elderly women lugging huge loads on their backs. It was pretty unique. After about 25 minutes we made it to yangshuo. Our destination was the bus station, and yes we got a bit lost again, but we made it there about 15 minutes later. Some man took our bikes and said he would look after them for the day for a small fee. A little sketchy but we went for it, and he led us over to the bus we needed.
Our bus was bound for xingping, a village about 50 minutes up the li river from yangshuo. The ride was unreal with the karst towering over us and the fields all around. Farmers wore thatched hats and some were half naked. It is so lush and green. It truly is Jurassic Park scenery. We went to the market in xingping, which was huge and happens every 3 days. We tried a bunch of food from all the vendors, it was great. Then we made our way to the docks to hire a bamboo raft.
We found one to take us a ways up the river and back again, about an hour trip. We started off from a private dock a little way out of town after a small shuttle bus ride, and were assigned our raft and driver. The rafts were long and of bamboo with benches on them for us. The driver steered with a small engine in the back. The river was surreal. It's just so hard to explain the scenery here. We bussed back to yangshuo after our river adventure and shopped a bit on the famous main drag, west street. It's pedestrian only, which was a nice change from dodging honking cars, and there were loads of shops. After a while we returned to the bus station to find our bikes still there and well, thank goodness. We biked back to the farmhouse through the country for a small dinner. It was a really good day, and were stoked for tomorrow as we are doing a Chinese cooking course. Bring on the rice and dumplings! We're going to be pros.