Yangshuo

We've been in Yangshuo for three days now. It's touristy but fun and beautiful. Kris and I went to a cave yesterday that had a mud hole. It was a lot of fun. The density of the muddy water meant that we could basically just lie on the water... more buoyancy than the Dead Sea. There was a clear pool to wash off in afterwards, but my hair still needed two washes later to get all the mud out. We took a bamboo raft ride and biked a little through the countryside. Kris and I are starting to get a little annoyed by the word "hello". People here use it as if to mean "consume". "Hello water? Hello Beer? Hello?" And they're everywhere. Even on the raft ride, which looks so serene... they set up floating food stands in the middle of the river and even photo booths to take our pictures, print them out, laminate them and sell them to us. We were bad Americans and bought nothing. We just wanted to enjoy the boat ride.

These are the green mountains that I've seen on China posters that I was looking forward to seeing. They really do just pop out of no where and go straight up. The city of Yangshuo itself has mountains sticking up in the middle of it. It's crazy... and beautiful.

Kris and I are going to take cooking lessons this afternoon! Maybe I can add a few more dishes to my repertoire of spaghetti and the very occasional summer roll.

We're taking a 10-hour, smoke-free (YIPEE!) sleeper bus to Hong Kong tonight. We won't stay too long there because it's pretty expensive, but we're looking forward to seeing it.