Ni hao from Yangshuo,
Our trip is coming to the end, there's only the Forbidden City left for
tomorrow when we're back in Beijing... but this last week has been one of
the most intense ones...
We left you the last time in Dali, ready to hop on a horse, which
unfortunately turned out to be impossible due to heavy rain falls : - (
Instead, we enjoyed the one lazy day of our vacation, in the Lazy Book Cafe,
where we read and ate cake and watched movies and drank tea and chatted with
nice people from morning to evening - until we had to go and catch our last
hard sleeper to Kunming!
The day before, we toured the Erhai lake region, and visited an immense
street market, the house of a brilliant chinese architect, we saw how local
people do batik (coloured cloth), visited a typical Bai house and enjoyed a
traditional music and dance show while drinking the special 3 course tea, we
tasted great local food, took a boot to cross the lake, watched the
cormorant(bird)fishermen, etc. etc.
In Kunming, we spent the day hiking in the Black Stone Forest, and the next
morning, we flew to Guilin and went straight on the bus to Yangshuo... the
mecca of travellers in China... (it's more like the Mallorca of China : ) -
a small town growing fast on tourism... you're not left alone for a minute
and at night there are rock concerts (oh, such bad singers, and ouff, so
loud!!)
But the scenery surrounding it is out of this world, so beautiful. We biked
up the Yulong river and then rafted down on bamboos - it must have been the
most quiet moment we've experienced in China. Our guide, Li Fang, took us to
lunch in her house, yammy (food is so great everywhere, jesus!). Afterwards
we went "caving" and mudd bathing (wait for the photos of us mudd
wrestling...).
Yesterday, we hiked up the Li River, from Xingping to Yangdi. Bruno was all
amazed that a kid wanted to touch his beard :)
When we got tired, we just went to the river bank and waved the next boat
downstream to give us a ride (Nic is such a hard bargainer... poor guy, he
wanted 150 and accepted 60 yuan).
Today was an easy day again, late breakfast (well, the little cat of the
hostel kept us awake all night with its eternal 'miau'!! So much noise
coming out of such a small thing! - no, Melanie, we didn't eat it! - Hmm,
but we saw fried rats today in the market, no kidding!).
Then we went (you'll never believe this) to a chinese cooking class!!!
The best meal we got so far... followed by a relaxing, therapeutic massage
and the last shopping... not to forget that we had to try on our tailormade
chinese clothes. Ah, such a hard life.
There' s not much left than packing and a last walk enjoying the beautiful
mountains around. Tomorrow morning, we'll leave early for Beijing and fly
back to Frankfurt on Saturday (Fred - do you still have our arrival time?
;-)
Last thing to add: we didn't see anybody eat cats or dogs, only the rats
today (but nobody ate them) and some poor turtles, which will end their
lives in a soup - ay!
What will we miss? - The wonderful landscapes everywhere, the noise (?!),
the delicious food (don' t trust the European Chinese restaurants, they‘re
cheating), the bargaining (will we ever stop?), the clean version of the
hard sleeper, the colours and smells of the street markets and mountain
paths, saying 'Ni Hao' every 5 minutes and getting big smiles back, and so
many more things, which we aren't aware of yet.
Big hugs to all of you and thanks for your patience reading our mails...
Brunotto e Nicolona
PS: Katja, don't forget...you know what : )
PPS: Ma, a chamada caiu no outro dia, eu ia dizer sabado...
