Morning came early for these two travelers, we had an 8:00 am pickup at our hotel for a 3 hour drive to the Longshen Rice Terraces and the Yao (also known as the "Long Hair Tribe") and Zhuang Minority villages. Our guide Amy had other clients scheduled today but she arranged for her friend Sally to take us, and Amy's son "Jake" was our driver. Amy even came with them to pick us up so she could introduce us. We sure lucked out when we found Amy. It was a lon...

Monday in Yangshuo We spent a full day with our wonderful guide Amy. We had busy day of sightseeing around Yangshuo, and she picked us up right on time at 9 am. Amy had good news for us--the river was once again open for rafting, so we drove straight to the "loading area". It was a busy place--lots of other tourists taking bamboo raft trips. We hopped on board our raft--it was really quite small, with 3 bamboo double seats under a small canopy. There...

We are loving Yangshuo, it is absolutely amazing! We both got a great nights sleep last night, I think we are finally over our jet lag and adjusted to "China time". We didn't really have any thing planned for today. We had a nice breakfast around the corner from our hotel, then came back and turned some laundry in. We decided we'd continue to explore Yangshou, and we started our day by doing a little souvenir shopping at some of the vendors set up along the...

Hello from Yangshuo, China! It was an early day for these two travelers--we were awake at 3:15 a.m. and left our hotel in Hong Kong at 5:15. Our taxi ride to Hong Kong International Apirport took about 30 minutes in the early morning light traffic. We went straight for Starbucks for a cup of coffee, and then found a restaturant for a quick breakfast. We checked in for our flight, got our boarding passes and explored the airport a bit. It's a very efficient ai...

Stay tuned for our adventures in mainland China! We'll arrive in Guilin and Yangshuo on April 6th, and hope to be able to share our adventures and post some great pictures of this beautiful area of south China. We are keeping our fingers crossed for decent internet connections during our 3 1/2 weeks in mainland China. If you don't see any entries, that means no connection! You can read about our week in Hong Kong on our regular blog: www.thevacationqueen.blo...