Mountains!!

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First off - thanks to all who've been commenting/facebooking/emailing etc. For some reason, being a couple and staying in our own room excludes us from a lot of the social aspect of hostelling. We have met heaps of people (usually couples like ourselves) but it usually takes the form of dinner time conversations or meeting someone on a boat/train/plane/bus and then never seeing them again. So its nice to have long distance conversations so that we don't completely drive each other insane 😊.

But back to the travelling. yesterday was pretty cool (although a bit of a rip-off ...). We jumped on board a boat to travel down the Li River to Yangshuo. Its either the boat or the bus and the area is amazingly scenic and the boat is the best way to see it all so rip-off or not, it was the best option. Quite cool really, we had a tour guide - jack (we named him panda jack as our group's flag had a panda on it - Kelly was quite excited about this) who pointed out the scenic spots. Which were mostly villages obscured by trees - neat. Oh, and the included lunch .. unbelieveably small .. but did include free beer so the day was salvaged.

Anyway, the river winds its way through incredible mountains that shoot up almost vertically, round off at the tip and then come down the same way - really amazing scenery. Along with that, there were fisherman on traditional bamboos rafts floating their way up and down the river, some almost getting flattened by our boat .. bizarro!

But yeah, it was an amazing trip, about 3-4 hours just floating along - very nice. Shared a table with a nice irish chap who is basically doing the exact opposite of our trip (bangkok through to Beijing) so interrogated him for all the information we could before he ran outside to take photos. Nice.

The destination of the cruise was Yangshuo, where we are now staying. Basically, its kinda like wanaka or queenstown. Nestled right in the middle of these amazing peaks, next to a river or three. The town itself is absolutely full of backpackers but amazingly, doesn't come across as tacky or cheesy, just full of life, full of markets with heaps of cool destinations within a 30 minute bike ride. Its said that this town has the highest proportional of western-chinese marriages anywhere and they've even named on street "western" street in honour of this fact.

So yeah, we really like it here and are enjoying our kick-ass hostel room and the nightlife. Its pretty when everything is packed in so close together - makes for a neat atmosphere. We even went to a bar(!) last night called the tintin club (all the staff wear tintin shirts - excellent) which playing some booty-shaking hip hop. Alas, no-one else was dancing and we were the only westerners in there so there was no booty shaking to be had.

Tomorrow, we plan to go on a little cycle trip to some villages - although we'll see what the weather has to say about that.

Peace out.

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Comments

[Suki]

QUOTE: We even went to a bar(!) last night called the tintin club (all the staff wear tintin shirts - excellent) which playing some booty-shaking hip hop. Alas, no-one else was dancing and we were the only westerners in there so there was no booty shaking to be had." ...... Dear Kelly I am soooooo disappointed after all those nights with Gandalph and BJ that you didn't get up and do your thang?? You've really let me down - i don't expect to hear news like this again. Did Andrew not even manage a bit of happy clapping ?? Loving all the updates and photos - of course i'm not jealous at all - I'd rather be at my desk, being cold and having winter blues :-).... Lots of Love Suki xxxxx