Guilin – Li River Cruise & Bamboo Rafting

Friday was the famous Li River cruise. We sat on the upper deck of the ferry almost the entire time and just took picture after picture of the crazy cool mountains. The other ferries would blare their horns at our slow moving ferry and then pass within feet of our ferry. Men on bamboo rafts would come up along side our ferry trying to sell the fresh fruit they had in crates on their rafts. And some junky looking boats would do the same, except they would sell their wares to the cooks at the back of the ferries that were cooking our lunch.

Our Li River cruise was three hours long and took us from a dock south of Guilin to a village called Yangshou that was my favorite place of all time (so far) in China. We stayed in Guilin the first night, but in Yangshou the second night.

It was in Yangshou that we went on the bamboo rafts, sitting in lawn chairs with giant patio umbrellas shielding us from the sun while Chinese men used long bamboo sticks to push us along the river for an hour and a half. On this river trip is where my classmates bought water guns and had an all-out war with each other, but mostly with the Chinese people that were also on the bamboo rafts. I didn’t really want to get that wet so I shared a raft with Meng Hua, since she didn’t want to get wet either. We didn’t buy any water guns. In fact, we took our umbrellas as shields from others’ water guns. We were still targets for the ruthless that didn’t care that we were armless and fully dressed, but that was kind of fun to get a little wet.

Arriving at the place to start the bamboo rafting was crazy! All of these women trying to sell their water guns came running up to our bus and immediately crowded around the door to the bus sticking their guns inside. We could barely exit the bus because of the press of these aggressive saleswomen! I had one relentless woman follow me with her water gun in my face for several minutes. I think she finally gave up on me when I got onto the raft without buying her gun. The rafting was so fun – it was free of all the loud sounds of the city, but not quiet either due to the screaming and laughter of the free-for-all water-fight.  And there were little water falls that we’d go over that would cause the nose of the raft to dive into the river sending water up and over our feet until the nose of the raft resurfaced.

That night we walked around their market that was a crazy mass of people! I was with Bryce and Pearl until we decided to go back to the hotel and that is when we lost Pearl in that mass of people! But no worries, we eventually found her.