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The 19th October was a purely travelling day. A 50 minute flight, a 1 hour 30 minute flight and a 1 hour 30 minute bus journey managed to stretch from 8am to 6:30 pm. Of the journey the only real events worth mentioning were finding a very satisfying Chinese newspaper article and finding out that Kaka also believes in the miracle of Mr Zhu’s Golden throat lozenges. When we arrived in Yangshuo, which was a lot touristier than I had anticipated, we had something to eat at a restaurant on West Street.
The next day we had a bike ride that the purists of the Walton Prison Route would be happy with through Yangshuo’s countryside. The scenery was beautiful; hundreds of limestone karsts were the backdrop to villages and farmer’s fields. We road to, then hiked up Moon Hill for some amazing views of the surrounding areas. On the way home I detached myself from the group and explored the local villages. It was good to get some alone time and restore the adventurous nature in me which had become subdued with the trip’s structured itinerary. That evening I also had my hair trimmed at a Chinese hairdressers. Although it wasn’t up to Paul the Barber’s standards it was good enough. I must point out that this was merely a trim. The plan of not cutting my hair for the full year is still in operation, my Jewish sideburns just had to go!
The next day we had a very underwhelming river cruise down the Li River. 30 minutes upstream then 30 minutes downstream was rather pointless considering it took nearly an hour to get there. The trip was saved from being a total disaster by a herd of water buffalo crossing to the far bank. During the evening I bumped into John, an Australian we had met on the Tiger Leaping Gorge. I stayed with him and two Scottish girls for the rest of the night, drinking and playing Bore Rummy. I also met them in the morning for breakfast before I attended my calligraphy class. The world of fine scribe is definitely not for me. I found the need for fine strokes not only difficult but highly frustrating. After that I looked around the local food market at the duck, rabbit and dog that was hanging up to roast. Not a pretty sight and it just reminded me of Toby so I left pretty sharpish! We had our last group dinner that night, I even talked myself into trying snake blood rice wine. Afterwards we boarded our final sleeper train and final group journey to Hong Kong.
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