After doing our nightly check-bed-for-spiders routine, we went to sleep, only to be woken by the sound of pouring rain in the night. It continued into the morning, along with thunder and lightening. Like torrential downpour-style rain. Well, at least we are indoors for our activity of the day! And it's funny how the people of yangshuo have adapted; they have motorcycle umbrellas. Yeah.
The cooking school sent a driver to pick us up at 9:20, and they took us along with 2 ladies from Mexico to the market. Our guide introduced as to all the ingredients we would be using and many others. There was so much at the market, from fruits and vegetables to eels and fish in tanks to live chickens and rabbits to many types of butchered meat, including dog. We learnt it's not as bad as we in Canada think though; they don't go around cooking their pet dogs, they breed a specific dog called a dingo for the meat. It was pretty cool, and undercover, thank goodness, because it was still pouring. They then drove us to the yangshuo cooking school, right on the banks of the li river. We each got our own burner, wok, steaming basket, utensils, and ingredients. After we chopped up all the vegetables we needed, our instructor did demonstrations for the dishes we would be making, and after each demonstration, it was our turn to cook. First we made egg-wrapped dumplings, which were stuffed with pork and seasonings and coated in duck egg. They were reeeally good. Then we prepared a steamed chicken dish with dates and mushrooms, followed by a fried and spiced eggplant dish. Our last 2 dishes were steamed garlic vegetables and stir-fried pork with vegetables. These last four dishes were set aside so we could eat them at the same time, along with a small bowl of rice. It was delicious, and I am still stuffed! It took a couple of hours and by the time we were done, the rain had died out. We walked around yangshuo and managed to finally find a place to buy our train tickets for tomorrow night. We then wondered around for a couple of hours, enjoying the river and shopping. We got a taxi back to the farmhouse after grabbing some fruit for dinner. Fingers crossed no rain tomorrow... We have more biking plans!