Friday 23rd

If we had seen this offer in the hotel yesterday afternoon, we might have had a spa treatment.

Another day of travelling, this time by boat along the Li River.  A 45-minute drive from the hotel to the dock where our boat – one of MANY – was waiting.

It’s a 4-hour cruise to see the limestone formations which are interesting at first but soon become repetitious. 

 The thing with moving from North China to South China is that the humidity has gone through the roof and we spent most of the time on the boat outdoors

Various fishing boats pull alongside to sell fresh fish and water snails to cook for the punters.
 

We saw men fishing with Cormorants. 

And a police boat kept going up and down the river.

You are meant to be able to see 9 horses in this formation.  We couldn’t.

And this one shows where the picture on the 20 Yuan note is taken from.

Arrived at Yangshuo which looks extremely touristy.  We have a day at leisure here tomorrow so not sure what that’s going to be like.

Driven from the harbour to our hotel and if you thought you were having a bad day today spare a thought for this guy.  We arrived at our hotel which is on the river and wondered what everyone was looking at.

We soon found out.

This monster crane was brought in to get it out.

Which went pretty smoothly actually…..

….but I’m sure the owner of the Mercedes is not a happy bunny.  Not sure it can be saved but at least it wasn’t sea water.

The hotel is basic but has a charm.

 After a nap and something to eat, we were collected to go to an outdoor show. 

 The director is the same guy who did the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  David, our guide, told us that everyone knew the director was rich but no one knew just how rich until he broke the one-child policy in force some years back.  The fine for doing this is based on a person’s wealth. He and his wife had 3 kids and had to pay a fine of US$1,000,000.

It tells the story of the local life in the area and is pretty impressive.  A bit like Trinidad Carnival set on water.

Random facts:

• In China, when you learn English at school you adopt an English name.  Our guides have been Rocky, Jonathan, Aria and David

• On the river there are a lot of villages.  Only one village has a primary school where  kids are taken every day by water taxi.  For high school they board at a school in the city from Monday to Friday.

• When we were on the underground in Beijing, I was looking out the window and a trailer for a movie was projected onto the tunnel wall as you went along.  Very clever.

• An exception to the one-child policy was if you are a member of a minority ethnic group you could have 2 children.