Yangshuo 1

I got breakfast the next morning in a cafe catering for Westerners, bought some snacks to substitute for lunch and then rented a bicycle. Using my compass and the "Ye Olde Style Mappe" I got from the souvenir shop, I cycled out of town looking for some of the surrounding sites but both were useless to me. Couldn't find anything matching the sepia coloured roads on the faux aged paper of my map and though it was still mid morning I was absolutely roasting and ready to burn up. I tried to follow a couple of Westerners with their own private hired guide but they took a sneaky turn down a farm lane and I quickly found myself at a dead end. Tired and annoyed (and slightly worried that I'd still be in the wilderness come midnight) I tried cycling back into town, through a heavy traffic tunnel and tried to find another place of interest, a path to the ancient "Dragon Bridge" on the Dragon River. On the way I met a Swedish couple, similarly lost for ages and we stuck together trying to find the way to the bridge. This took it took a long time. Hours of cycling in the heat over ridges between rice paddies, with the river just out of site off to the side, refusing the constant hassle by two bamboo raft ladies.. "Is this the way to Dragon Bride? No we don't want a bamboo raft ride.. No Bamboo! No Bamboo!" But if it hadn't been for them we would never have found our way there at all. The bamboo ladies would cycle on 100m and then hunker down in the shade until we caught up and shout "Bamboo? You want Bamboo!!?". So glad to finally reach the bridge around 3pm. Delirious with the heat, we drank some sunscreen, slathered on some water, and sat in the shade trying to cool down. As we contemplated getting a raft back and rewarding the persistent ladies, a huge bus load of Chinese tourists arrived and took nearly all the waiting rafts. That didn't stop the two ladies who had followed us all the way as they had their own, slightly wrecked, rafts. The Swedish lady was very good at bargaining and almost against the husbands wishes got us a ride back - me in one boat with two bikes, them in the other with mine. It was a slow journey - veery slow. At some points we even stopped. Went over some small rapids too. But it was nice and peaceful and just what I needed after the cycle. Just wish I wasn't so prone to burning I wouldn't have had to spend the entire journey huddled until the parasol. The raft took us back a good chunk of the way. Still had to cycle a lot, but this time it was a little more comfortable weather-wise, with the sun beginning to set, giving us plenty of time to intrude on the local farms and their livestock to take pictures.