Down the Li River on a "bamboo" raft

A downriver "cruise" on a bamboo raft on the Li River sounded exciting so one morning we took a taxi north from Yangshuo to Yangdi. Early morning was recommended to avoid the larger river boats that brought thousands of mostly local tourists from Guilin to Yangshuo.

I naively expected to see about a dozen rafts at Yangdi. I should have known better. This is China and there's no avoiding crowds, especially at tourist spots. I saw hundreds of rafts, not made of bamboo but of thicker plastic tubes and powered by small motors. A few chairs placed on the raft (they were not even nailed down) and a rough awning completed the picture.

At the start, the river was choppy because of the rafts taking off. But, as the ride progressed, they thinned out. The boatmen were competing to be in front.

Those are my shoes. That's how close to the water we were. But the ride did not feel dangerous. The waters became rough only when we passed a few river boats that were going up the river towards Guilin. The riverboats carrying day trippers from Guilin to Yangshuo were apparently behind us.

One can take only so many karst hills. Like the endless temples in Bangkok, they become tedious after a while. So the locals had given them interesting names and sometimes these names actually matched the shape of a particular hill. Between Yangdi and Xingping, the map shows these names: White Tiger Hill, Pen Holder Peak, Grandpa Watching Apple (!), Kitchen Cage Hill, Fish Tail Peak, Eight Supernaturals Crossing the River, Tortoise Climbing Up the Hill, Nine Horse Fresco Hill, Lion Watching the Nine Horses, and Yellow Clothe in the Water.

This part of the river was dark and deep. The boatman insisted we put on life jackets; they were torn and ill fitting. More for appearance than safety.

The end of the raft ride at Xingping.

We didn't plan to spend much time in Xingping, but, walking thru the small town, I found some lovely, old streets with houses to match. Xingping had first been settled in 265AD and these houses looked as old as that!

I peeped in to a few houses. The interiors were straight from the 1950s, with large portraits of Mao adorning the doorways. One house had all the champions of Marxism--Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao--in black and white, hung above the inner entrance. Elderly ladies sat within these homes, probably bewildered by the thousands of day trippers passing by and the changes that "Communist" China had undergone in recent times. I also saw a cluster of elderly men happily whiling away the time on a game of cards.

The roofs of old houses in Xingping.

We had coffee at Kelley's, a smaller version of the better known restaurant in Yangshuo. Rich, the owner of both places (I believe), who is from Taiwan, invited me to take a look at the rooms he had recently built at the back of the restaurant. Rising to three floors, the building offered panoramic views of the town and the rooms were only Yuan 100 per day for rent. I thought of spending a few days in this charming town on a future visit. If I got bored, Yangshuo is only an hour by bus, costing just Yuan 7.