Bamboo rafting

Guilin and Yangshuo, China

We experienced our first high-speed train journey from Nanningto Guilin which was very smooth. A lovely Chinese couple sitting next to us offered Jack and I some of their food. We accepted, feeling it would be rude to say no, and how bad could it be? … Chicken feet! Toe nails and all … After Jack pulled out his, I thanked them and said I’d share Jack’s but they kindly insisted I had my own. Great. We sat there looking at them for a while wondering which part to eat. Jack ended up putting the whole thing in his mouth and chewed around the bone. I nibbled the skin off the toe and decided that was enough for me and put the rest in a sick-bag that was conveniently placed in the pocket in front of me.

We stayed in Guilinfor a couple of nights to break up our journey to Yangshuo. Yangshuo was a quirky little town situated between beautiful mountainous countryside. In between the cute little gift shops, bakeries and restaurants were multiple pole dancing clubs which looked very out of place.

We did a bamboo raft trip down the Yulong river which was really relaxing. Especially after getting lost and being 2 hours late for the trip due to our non-existent Chinese language skills. The locals were friendly and tried to help us out, but we had no idea what they were telling us and they didn’t speak a word of English. We eventually found our way back to where our bamboo raft guide was waiting for us. After a peaceful float down the river, we cycled (by tandem bike), through beautiful countryside, back to the Yangshuo town.