Yangshao and Kayaking on the Li River.....

The bus from Guilin to Yangshao Wednesday morning took an hour and a half - but only one hour of travelling. The rest of the time was taken up by the attendant swinging out the door of the bus as she shouted "Yangshao,Yangshao,Yangshao", in an effort to fill up the bus en route....and it worked. The bus was only quarter full leaving and there was no empty seat when we actually got on the road. I've seen a lot of crazy driving in China - but this was madness - with cars and bikes darting everywhere. I'm beginning to think that the Chinatown buses from NY to Boston are actually not that dangerous...in comparison!


Yangshao is definitely the most rural of places we've been - but its still a decent size town and popular with tourists. After a quick walk around Wed evening - we got down to business and booked kayaking on the Li for Thursday morning. Short cruises were double the price - so this combined some activity and the sights of the river.

Knew we were in the country when I woke to a cock crowing at around 5am - but went back to sleep, don't worry. I don't remember waking to that before. The kayaks were great - we were dropped off upstream, and told which direction to go in, and that's it - no guide or coach - just the river as company. The river was fairly deep in places - so stayed close to the shore when possible and tried to avoid the bamboo boats with tourists and fishermen and the likes. Half way through, we were called ashore by a local and we saw a sign for a 'restaurant'. The whole family greeted us and offered us a cup of tea! Initially accepting, when we saw the price we ordered noodles instead as hadn't much cash. When we ordered, we were told the tea was on the house - so sat down with the father and son while the mother cooked the noodles - brilliant ! It was authentic as it gets, Chinese green tea in small terracotta cups, really small ones, and we had about 10 of them. Finished up the noodles and went for a stroll around the countryside before getting back on the kayaks. This place was amazing - we were in the middle of nowhere in village with maybe 50 people. There was an old woman sitting on a stool in the shade - something you'd see in Ireland 50 years ago. Also when I looked in the door of one of the houses - saw a huge picture of Mao in the center of the room.
Got back on the river and met 2 other kayakers and travelled downstream with them to where another guy flagged us in at the end of the route - about an hour later. We had been told to follow him to get back to Yangshao - and he lead us through the most bizarre town I've ever seen, Every business had a completely open front - as if there was no front wall. We even passed a dentist's office - where we could see someone having their teeth being worked on as I looked in. The dentist had all the mod cons - so the place was a real old meets new town - no proper roads, but a mobile phone shop. We were guided onto a local bus heading back to Yangshao, which was full of local country folk, young and old. Many of them were taking boxes and sacks of rice etc to the market, They were just building the road and the bus ride was a little shaky - but this was as authentic as I've seen. Thursday evening we met up with Travis again,the guy from NZ who was on the cruise and in Wuhan, and after a very tasty dumpling dinner and a walk around town - we decided to rent bikes the following day and explore the countryside and villages around.