Guilin to Yangshuo river cruise on the Li River.
We thought we were booked onto a 30 seater boat like this one but there were about 100 people on ours. We chose to join a Chinese tour rather than an English speaking one and we had great fun.
The Chinese tour guide was also the boat photographer and he bellowed out his interpretations of the karst hills-some he said represented an apple, or wife yearning for husband while others were well known as nine painted horses and the female buddha.
It took 5 hours altogether and lunch was included. We were seated at a table with 8 people. There was a Chinese woman with her parents and Aunt and a Polish man (Edward) with his Chinese friend (Ker Qi Mae). The Chinese family bought extra food and invited us to share it. We ate river snails in their shells cooked in chilli, small fried river crabs (we ate these whole- very crunchy), and river shrimps with a garlic sauce (we ate the shrimp and shells and left the heads).
It's amazing what you will eat when you don't want to offend people!
On thetop of the boat was a large viewing area and a small first-class cabin. We met some ladies from Yunnan in the cabin and they were singing and dancing and so Lil joined in. It was such a laugh!
John was a hit with the husbandless women on board. They wanted to know how old he was and where he was from.
I'm sure we would not have had as much fun on the English speaking tour and the weather was fine !
