Boating down the River in Yangshuo

Once at our hotel though, our friendly welcoming committee (Two Brothers or so they said), insisted that we wanted to take a boat tour. They waited outside our door and told us that the Polish kids were also going and TODAY only could we get this very good deal, at a huge discount (we later were told happily from their competition that we had paid way too much). In our sleep deprived confused state we agreed to the boat trip after they said they would throw in breakfast and lunch (always a perk in my eyes and very very very cheap for them!). At 8:30 we were off for our free breakfast of noodles with the locals. From arrival at the bus station to departure for our boat tour, Emily and I had enjoyed only 15 minutes of peace without the brothers trying to sell us a bicycle or boat tour and this 15 minutes only came after agreeing to the boat trip. We slurped down noodles (me closing my eyes so that no more hot sauce splashed me) on itty bitty chairs sized for preschoolers while the locals laughed at us. We laughed too, it was funny. The one brother (clearly the ladies man and aptly so as he was cute with a dimple and quite the charmer) who had told us he would be our tour guide the entire day, put us on a bus to a destination unknown to us. We were already staying at a hotel that we did not know the name of (no Pinyon name, just Chinese characters). As we headed out of town to our unknown destination without our guide, there was a sinking realization that we had forgotten our Chinese phrase book. Everyone else on the bus appeared to be locals commuting to work so we thought for sure we had been taken and we were just going to end up at a random destination, but later we discovered they were other Chinese tourists. At our unknown destination we were passed off to yet another tour guide speaking less English than the last and put on a ricochet with 6 others and shuttled to the river. At the river we were put on a boat. As we accelerated past tour boats, it became obvious that our guide was more interested in finishing the boat tour that had just begun than going at a leisurely pace. Occassionally he would pull away from his cigarette to bark out a fact about the passing scenery (I assumed because the other tourists would look at the hills, but he said everything in Chinese). We stopped at a gypsy camp, being greeted by vendors particulary interested in Emily and I (we were the only whites). Although the vendors greeted us with "Hello" and the "Hellos" became more insistant when we said, "No", the vendors did not seem to understand what "No" meant. Eventually to my delight, we reboarded, turned around and again accelerated past the tour boats. Departing the boat, we were passed off to another tour guide. Our lady told us to "go with this man" and he instructed to hop on a moped. While Emily beamed and was obviously having the time of her life, I clutched her and fretted over spinal injuries. At the lunch spot, we were pleasantly surprised by a nice fire and delicious food. The fires they make are coals in a steel pan that can then be moved to your seating loactions. They give off lots of heat and the entire time we were in China I fantasized about buying myself one of these heating contraptions. While we waited for our food we sat around the fire with local woman who were knitting. It was nice to be away from the vendors and safe in the security of the resturant. Although later we were moved to a table and the vendors started coming to our table selling things while we ate. Dinner was good and Emily and I were pleasantly surprised by this point to have gotten a tour, food, and not be abandoned trying to find our way back to Yangshou without our Mandarine Chinese phrase book. Before passing us off to her husband, our guide had instructed us to take a walk around town, come back to the restuarant and she would then put us on the bus to Yangshuo. Although this woman was no where insight, we decided to do as she suggested and walked around being chased by vendors. We found the pubic bathrooms, smelled them first before we saw them and true to the guide books, they were not that foxy. We returned to the restuarant wondering if the woman would remember to come get us. Back on the tour bus, the driving was frightening. Diesel trucks, old men pushing carts with their wares, motorcycles, bicyclists, tour buses, and goats all were on the same road and yet despite the lack of order, there were no accidents. I thought I would usually see at least one accident over the same distance in the US on my drive from Gardiner to Bozeman.