both coming down with a cold. Jesica was pretty sick yesterday on the
bus, but she was starting to feel a bit better. We got ready and
headed out to find a good spot to eat breakfast. We decided on a place
called Cafe Mimosa. They had a wide variety of foods, but I thought my
meal wasn't the best. I guess I had too high expectations for all the
western food that was being advertised. After we ate, we went to the
tours office to decide what we wanted to do as activities for the two
full days we were here. We decided on the bamboo rafting down the
Yulong River. The lady told us to come back at 2pm and someone would
pick us up to take us to the river. We went to the hotel to get ready
and came back at 2pm, to a guy outside on a motorcycle. We were hoping
it wasn't our ride, but it sure was! We could barely even fit on it
with 3 people! At first, it was a little scary riding through the town
with all the other taxis and buses, but then we got on the back roads
and paths and it was actually really fun and exciting. It was like
getting two tours/activities for the price of one, since we clearly
thought a bus full of people would be picking us up, not a motorcycle.
We finally got to our destination after passing a few cows and driving
on some pretty bumpy trails. The Yulong River was awesome! By far the
most beautiful thing I had seen since we got to China. We climbed onto
our bamboo raft and our paddle guy got us going. I would like to add
that our bamboo man looked a lot like Obama. Anyways, it was so
relaxing and scenic! It was a great tour decision, since we were still
recovering from our colds. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking! It
was a two hour ride down the river. We were also the only foreigners
on the rafts. All the Chinese people were very amused with us,
especially because we did not have our umbrella up, we had bikinis on,
sunglasses, and were laying out sunbathing. They all said "hello" as
they went by us, some took pictures of us, and others tried to shoot
us with water guns. We were getting a little annoyed so we stopped by
the beer lady's raft to get some beers for the ride. We even offered
the paddle guy one, but he responsibly took a vitamin water instead.
This made me care a little less that the Chinese were shooting us with
water guns. We also saw some really cool water buffalo. I took about
200 pictures just on this raft, since everything was so amazing!
Once we made it to the end of the trip, we got out by this bridge with
a few little shops and a place where you can buy pictures from the
rafting. I bought one of me, Jes, and our bamboo man. Then, we saw
this man with two adorable monkeys that you could take pictures with
for 10 yuan. I was such a sucker for that so I had to get some pics
with the monkeys. They were so cute and cuddly! One even tried to pull
out my belly button ring, ha ha guess he wasn't sure what it was. We
finally found a cab to drive us back into town. It was quite possibly
the roughest cab ride I have ever taken! I literally thought the
wheels were going to fall off this wagon thing of a cab. He dropped us
off at what we thought was the center of town, but was actually a
little far away. It was alright though, since we wanted to walk around
some and had plenty of time to explore. We had to stop at a hotel to
ask for directions back to the main street of town. It was the nicest
hotel we had seen in Yangshuo and I'm sure was pretty pricey!
Our hotel ended up being pretty close to where we were, so we got back
and showered up for dinner. We decided on a pizza place again, which
was even better than the night before. While we were eating, our
German friends from the night before just happened to be walking by so
we finished up at the pizza place, and went across the street to grab
some drinks with them. The menu at this restaurant was quite
disturbing. It had "stir fried dog" and "roasted bamboo rat" on the
menu, so gross! They were the most expensive menu items as well. We
just stuck to drinks! We went to another bar after awhile and ended up
staying out pretty late, since we were having so much fun! After a
quick McDonald's ice cream stop, we finally got some sleep! What an
awesome day :)
Pic 3 & 4: Bamboo rafts and gorgeous scenery along the Yulong River
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