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Mental note: Never sit on plastic stools again

We woke at midday due to last nights shenanigans and decided to do a boat trip that afternoon as it required minimal effort!  Before this we had lunch at a random dumpling shop which turned out to be amazing even though the dumplings had cabbage in them (this is very strange for me).  They only cost about 30p for 20 dumplings so I was avery happy lad.

We decided to do the boat trip by our own means instead of going through one of the three million tourism agencies here to save ourselves 5 kwai (33p) and caught a local bus to a small town called Xingping.  Guess who was on the bus....only the bloody Israeli women i bought flowers for the previous night!!  She acyually seemed pretty keen (how couldn't she be?) but I just continued with polite conversation as to not seem keen - there was no way I was going there!!

After 40 minutes we departed the bus and were met by an army of touts offering trips down the Li river.  As I was with Benny (the Chinese guy), we got a pretty good deal and only paid about 2 quid for an hour and a half on a fishing boat all the way up to Yang Di and back.  The scenery was amazing and I just sat on the front of the boat with my feet dangling in the water relaxing and taking photos.  It was a bit smoggy, but then everywhere in China seems to have a constant haze over it.  On the way back to Xingping on the boat the water got a little bit rougher for a few minutes and I got conpletely soaked head to toe including my camera (still works OK), but it was quite funny nevertheless.

We got dropped off about 2km from Xingping and walked the rest of the way through fields and small fishing villages which was pretty cool.  The locals were unbelievably friendly to us, but even Benny couldn't understand what they were on about as their regional dialects were so strong!

When back in Xingping we caught one of the last buses back to Yangshuo.  I say bus, but it was just a beat up extended minivan with 18 seats.  I counted how many people were on the bus - a total of 42 - on a 18 seater bus, you can imagine it was pretty cramped.  To add insult to injury, I was sat on a tiny plasic chair for the first ten minutes, but as soon as we came to a big bend the chair collapsed underneath me (much to the amusement of the locals).  I couldnt be bothered to stand up, so the rest of the journey was spent sitting on the floor hugging my knees as to not take up too much room.  It was painful!

That night Daz and I splashed out on a steak dinner with milkshakes.  I dont care what you say, but it is actually impossible to get a good steak in China - maybe due to the fact we have only seen about two cows in our whole time here?!?!  It was pretty goppin, but hey, it all comes out the same way doesn't it...

After dinner I tried to call home as it was my mums birthday, but she wasnt in as per usual and my dad wasnt in the office either, so i just headed back to bed for an early night.

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