What's Next?: Yangshuo and Guilin at Night

Along the southern part of the Li River is the flood plain where it is much calmer and runs very close to land. Many of the families use the water to irrigate their fields, the road is also calm enough that we can slowly cruise down it with bikes.

We got up early enough for one of these experiences but finding the biking route turned out to be much more difficult especially with my sense of direction. We ended up riding on part of the Chinese highway, dodged the toll booth by sneaking through the side with some other mopeds...mostly though, it was thanks to Brian's GPS that we finally got on the "right route".

"Right route" because yeah it was one of the many country roads we can ride on, we enjoyed the rock formations up close while having the ability to stop any time. But had we continue with it, it would have taken us way off the map and we would not have gone back on time to catch the bus back to Guilin...

Our solution? rode along the river until we see a bridge to cross...

It didnt take too long until we rode by a white girl, a good indication that there was some sort of tourist transportation, and we were right, soon we came across this broken bridge and sure enough, these men with the bamboo rafts were conveniently there...and they wanted no negotiations :(

about to cross the river

me clearly getting the short end with no chair

Once we crossed the river we realized we had gotten it all wrong from the start. The other side of the river was where we wanted to ride on with all the scenic views, however, I was secretly glad we chose the other side since these attractions all needed additional tickets, and we were short on time anyways, so hey, although we did got a bad deal on the raft, at least two wrongs did make one right.

Later in the afternoon, we took the bus back to Guilin and once again, the consequence of not planning strikes.

We had about 3 hours left to find us bus tickets to Fenghuang, our next stop, which was about 8 hours north. Then find transportation to Longji, where the giant mountainside rice paddy are, and then find a place to rest.

After some wild goose chase between the Guilin bus and train station, we found out during "off season" for tourism, there was no bus to Fenghuang and to go to Longji, we needed to get on a bus that stopped running by noon...

Well, that wasn't gonna stop us, and we were inside the city anyways so we eventually found a hotel to settle down for the night with the help of yet another over-helpful lady.

She hooked us up with a good deal to see the Rice Paddy for the next day, and got us a hotel room at a discount rate (discount based off the decorative listing price at the door) and helped us buy the train ticket to go to Fenghuang since she "supposedly" worked there before (I dunno anymore about these claims people tell me while I'm traveling)

But woah, even though we didnt have everything go according to plan (or an imagined one), we did complete all our list items, although it was probably at a hefty price compared to how we wanted (hence remember to NEVER change your plan while you travel).

By the time we were free to browse around Guilin, it was already dark, so after a short walk around these Pagodas, we returned to the hotel and started preparing for the next day:

Longji Rice Paddy and a 8 hour overnight train to follow. This would be our first over night, luckily we did find seats among the midst of the Chinese New Year.