Our own "Painted Veil " experience

Not, not with cholera!

On the third day of our trip, we were able to take a wonderful, slow and easy bamboo raft trip down the Yulong River. It wasn't quite the boat trip that Kitty and Walter made in the movie The Painted Veil as that actually took place closer to a town called Huangyao further down the Lijiang than Yangshuo.

Better than the riverboat trip, this float was an incredibly slow, quiet journey that was all about the rocks and the water. Our Yangshuo English-speaking guide took us to a little village on the Yulong near the Yulong Bridge. She explained to us that it was a very poor farming village, which was obvious from the unpaved roads, and the outhouses and pumps outside the homes. However, this is China, and I could hear coming from a window-pane-less home what pretty much sounded like CCTV 5 (Chinese ESPN).

Our trip began at the Yulong Bridge, one of the oldest bridges in all of Guanxi province. It is several hundred years old and built without any mortar. It was clear the the local villagers are very proud of this treasure, as our raft pilot made sure we were positioned to get good pictures of it before we turned around and proceeded down the river.



Immediately, the scene was amazing. Rocks and water. Even more rocks and water.



The river was, of course, low, and the tourists at this time of year weren't that many, so our trip was very slow, probably slower than it would have been at other times of the year, as well as very quiet. Also, the water was quite still and mirror-like.







Down this river the mountains appeared to us mostly in shades of grey. Who would have thought that a scene of grey would give us gooseflesh?





I've blogged that Guilin is all about the rocks and the water, but this is one of my favorite pictures from the trip that doesn't have Randy or Myles in it. After our bamboo float down the Yulong, we walked back to the road through the farmland that lies between the little river and the mountains. In that particular area the primary crop is rice. Most of the rice paddies we saw had already been drained and harvested, the second harvest in that area in the year. The straw is bundled in these shocks, saved for food and bedding for the water buffalo for the colder months ahead.



After the float we made a quick lunch-time stop at a restaurant under the Moon Hill. This mountain is so called because from different angles, the hole in the mountain appears to be different phases of the moon.


At this restaurant we ate what they advertised as "local farmer food." This included a delicious hot and spicy fruit and tofu soup and batter-dipped and fried pumpkin. Yum, yum!

After this was yet another cave, the Silver Cave. Myles was of course very into the caves all weekend long, and while they were cool, the experience was much more fun feeding off of his enthusiasm. The best part for me, was when we found this Raj-shaped rock configuration.



What do I mean by Raj-shaped? Why, Myles' toy stegosaurus named Raj.

More pictures from day three here. On our fourth day we had about an hour and a half to kill, so we took yet another float on a river, this time the Lijiang south of Yangshuo. This one was not on a bamboo raft but on a slightly larger raft equipped with a special outboard motor. Pictures from that are here, including one of what appears to be an abandoned factory by the river.