Day 139: Yangshuo, China.

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Day 139: Thursday, April 15th, 2010.
Yangshuo, China.

Still very cold and rainy here. Things could be worse, there was a horrible earthquake in the Northwest part of China, in the Qinghai province. I'll be in Chengdu in a couple of weeks which is near there, so I was lucky.

We decided not to do a bike ride in these lovely conditions so that morning we (minus Ling, she gave us directions the night before) went to a local market. There, you could buy any vegetable you could imagine, and any animal you could imagine. Yes, that means dog. We avoided the area where they had the skinned dogs and explored the rest. Then, it was pretty much a hotel day which was friggin' boring as hell since 1) I'm in Yangshuo and want to explore but I'm frozen and 2) All tv stations are in Chinese (Mandarin to be exact)- who saw that coming? I streamed a couple of movies for Rita and myself, "Chicago" (her favorite) and "Serenity" (a favorite of mine). That helped pass some of the time.

Dick and Judy left us today (booooo). They joined another Intrepid group that was leaving for Hong Kong tonight and getting in the day before us. They have a plane to catch to Japan and our train wouldn't have made it in time. They were fun to travel with and will be missed. After dropping them off, myself, Rita and Ling (the remaining few) walked over to the Li River and made plans for tomorrow. Looks like the weather should clear up, so we'll be able to explore finally (before leaving at 6pm for our long ass train ride that is.) Ling went off to meet some friends and Rita and I perused the shops some more. I had been planning on buying a Mahjong set when I got back to the states but when I laid my eyes on the pretty ones in the market, I caved. Probably paid more than I should have (I bartered down a bit) but considering Ling's reaction, I overpaid. Oh well, I'm happy. Unfortunately it weighs about 2 pounds so we'll see what it does to my back to carry it around (and hopefully I won't be over the weight limit when I fly.) Hmm... maybe I'll ship it back to the States in Hong Kong. We shall see.

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Photos

Non vegetable part of market.
No pics of dogs, don't worry.