As we entered China, I expected, as I believe nearly everyone does, to see communism in its most stereo-typical form... dark and cloudy days with big dull concrete block structures, police constantly peaking over your shoulder, and people that are shy and quiet because they are afraid of who is watching or listening. Now, it was a dark, cloudy and rainy day when we entered China, and I instantly felt that it was going to be hard to travel around because after leaving the border there was absolutely no English written or spoken anywhere. However, using our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook (which we duct-taped over the cover to prevent it from being confiscated since it is illegal in China) I was able to point to the Chinese characters of the city that we wanted to visit and from there everything got a lot easier, and, once again, nearly all my preconceptions were wrong as we passed neighborhoods of nice houses, beach resorts, and had no problems with the police or anyone else.

However, even with the hospitality, it was quite an issue trying to catch multiple buses and read timetables in a script that was completely unintelligible for me, but after around twenty hours of traveling we finally made it to Guilin. Guilin is a small city located in the Guangxi Province, which is in the Southeast part of China bordering Vietnam and is nearly due West of Macau. The area here is world-renowned for its landscape, and the best way to see it is to hire a boat or raft and drift down the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo. We were a bit pressed for time since Kelly was flying out of Beijing on the 28th of November, so we set about the morning we arrived to finding a boat and making the trip.

The "boat" we were on was actually a several PVC pipes lashed together to make a raft coupled with our old driver with just a few teeth using a howling long-tail motor on the back. The loud noise of the engine took away a bit of the ambiance, but we began our way past the thousands of giant limestone peaks that rise out of the ground like up-side down ice cream cones. Small bushes, trees, and vines cling to the steep slopes of the small mountains, which along with the palm trees and rice fields surrounding the bases made the area seem like a tropical and mystical dreamworld. The old world culture of the area was also still very much alive as the old men and women would stand on the banks of the river near their bamboo thatch villages using their trained cormorants (water birds) to fish for them. They also made fish farms in the river out of handwoven nets and chopped logs and would stand out in the water with their hand nets and cone-shaped straw hats casting out to harvest the fish.

The ride through the picturesque peaks (karst topography) and past the many rural villages brought us to the village of Yangshuo. This beautiful little town still retains much of its old Chinese character, mainly due to tourism, but it was a wonderful place with quaint wooden buildings, hanging lanterns, and classic Chinese tiled roofs. It is a place that I would have liked to stay for some time, but now we have to move on to Xian in the Shaanxi Province. Xian is one of the most important cities in China because it was the imperial capitol of China for several centuries, but today it is well-known for being the home of the famous terracotta soldier army, which was made by China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Till next time, Cheers.