Guilin to Yangshuo

The next morning I went out and changed some money, got completely ripped off on a bus ticket to Yangshuo (my own fault for not checking the price before hand). The bus took about an hour and a half and on the way down I was sat beside a helpful guy from Hong Kong who'd been living in Toronto the past 15 years; said he was really glad his family had grown up over there. Arriving in Yangshuo I didn't have anywhere to stay again, but being a Monday morning there were plenty of touts out looking for people and I found a nice hotel with a big bed and Chinese state TV (with internet downstairs) for only 50RMB - so I stayed for the next 4 nights. The town was right in the middle of all the fabulous scenery I'd been expecting - limestone hills right on the edge of the small down. This place was much more touristy than Guilin but setup mostly for bus loads of Chinese tourists. And they did come by the bus load. Found a travel agent a little out of town - somewhere less likely to give me the run around - and bought my onward ticket to Shenzhen and, while I was there, an afternoon tour on the Li River. I had just enough time to run back, grab lunch and hurry back to the travel agent before the bus came. What I didn't think through though was that the bus was a tiny local minibus and that the tour was comprised entirely of Chinese tourists - no English in site. The bus made its way to Xinping, a town up river and the site of the most spectacular river scenery, picking up and dropping off farmers along the way, everybody giving me a second look as they got on. We got off the bus in Xinping and then onto an electric cart which took us to the riverside and I found out two Chinese girls were actually Americans studying in China and on their "Spring Break". A very fortunate lifeline, they kindly translated some of the blurb the boat captain was going on about. The cruise was really nice and long enough that we caught a little of the sunset on the river. It wasn't quite the misty dawn image from my imagination but still pretty good. That night, the English language Chinese TV news happily told me how world opinion was completely on the side of the Chinese, and for the whole time I was there news didn't extend beyond anything to do with the Olympics.