THE ADVENTURES OF YUANGSHOU

The city of Guilin

After playing in a pool of mud!!!

The rice fields - they were so amazing!

On the bamboo rafts that took us through the beautiful cliff mountains in the background.

This weekend was our last vacation! We went to Yuangshou which is a 10 hour bus ride. We took a sleeper bus there, I have decided that sleeper buses are the way to go, you go to sleep and by the time you have woken up you have reached your destination. When we got off the bus there were huge mountains around us, they weren't actually mountains, they looked more like cliffs! They were amazing! We got there Thursday morning around 6, we got to our hostel and figured out what we wanted to do for the weekend. We took a bike ride to the mud caves, we walked around in the cave, played in a pool of mud and laid in a hot spring. That night we went to a show on water, the Chinese know how to put on a good show! They had lit up the cliff mountains in the background and there was singing and dancing, it was so awesome! On Friday we took a bus to the rice fields, I thought the rice fields were going to be lame and as I was walking up a million stairs I still couldn't believe I was doing it. As we got to a resting point and we could look out over the valley and see all of the rice fields, it was incredible! I couldn't believe how much time and energy this place takes! We met a couple yesterday who were doing the same tour as us, the guy, Stepheno, is from Italy and the girl, Alex, is from Spain. They each know 4-5 different languages and they just travel around to different countries teaching languages. They were vegetarian so they invited us to a vegetarian restaurant, I was scared at first but the food was delicious! We ate bamboo (which was surprisingly good) and a lot of different veggies. We had so much fun hanging out with this couple and I couldn't believe they weren't sick of us! By the time Saturday rolled around we were all pooped! We went on a bamboo raft down Li River. It was relaxing and it was an awesome view, we were surrounded by the cliff mountains! We ate lunch at Lucy's Place, all of our friends who have gone to Yuangshou earlier have told us to go there and I'm glad we did! I ate the american style chicken strips and we all had a fried banana with ice-cream and chocolate drizzled on top! It was yummy! That night we hopped on a sleeper bus at 7:30 and got home Sunday morning at 5 a.m., that sleeper bus was hard to sleep on because I was holding on for my life, the driver was going about 100 MPH down a windy road. This trip was pretty fun, it is awesome to see the different parts of China because each place that we have visited has been very different.