Day 14 Last day in Yangshuo

Day 14 February  3 Last day in Yangshuo (EE)

After watching the sky brighten behind the mountains, I got up around 7 to go for a walk. Not really early by school day standards. Nor for Chinese tourists.  The bamboo rafts must start up from the town docks as soon as it is light.  There were five fully loaded..  driver and six passengers...on the river as I walked to the right, past the bike rental house to the slightly more main road. 

The road led to a couple of villages. What does that mean? A large patch of land subdivided into many plots,  each about the size of the old NCC  garden plots.  Many rich and green with mustard,  cabbages,  carrots, some peas blooming and many orange and kumquat trees.  There are deep rectangular basins made of concrete that fill up with water during the March to May rainy season.     Other plots are untended and weedy. Alf explained that farmers are making more in a month as landlords (or more) than they ever made farming.   Many of the tall, simple houses are being converted to guest houses or hotels.    (I have some photos to illustrate this.) 

Quite a few people in the fields picking mustard and cabbages and loading the into baskets on their three wheeled bikes,  or baskets which they then carried with a yoke over their shoulders.  

The road turned west and led to the outskirts of Yangshuo.   There are about eight four storey apartment buildings there. There will be more soon, I imagine they will be done by the end of the summer. 

Then left on one of the main roads in to town.   By now it was 8 and the day well underway for Chinese tourists.   Families were pouring out of the many hotels, into cars,  onto rented bikes,  into the many storefront restaurants selling breakfast noodles and just wandering.   I joined them, although not for noodles today.  Instead I stopped at a restaurant by the river and had a "Dutch Breakfast." Juice, coffee, yogurt, scrambled eggs, bacon and toast for 28 yuan. It was already over 20 degrees, warm enough to eat outside. 

Then wandered among the river front, watching people live up for raft rides, try their two or three days rented bikes, pose beside the cormorants who were tied (Not nailed) to their perch and generally have a good time on holiday in warm weather.a

A note about restaurants here.  When you sit down, the server hands you a menu then stands there until you order.  It can be a bit intimidating at first.  In this tourist town they are more used to westerners, so will give you time of you need it.   In many places you also pay right away. The food is almost always delicious. 

The whole walk was about 2.5 hours and I arrived back in time for a second cup of coffee at the hotel. It was a superb start to a very satisfying day.