We woke up Sunday morning to the rain that had been forecasted the day before. Our group was doing an excursion, a boat ride down the Li River to get a closer look at the mountains. We were meeting at 8 AM. With our "late" night the night before, the kids slept in and we had to eat a rushed breakfast. We had a short bus ride to get on the boat before a 3 hour ride down the river. The rain stopped by the time we arrived at the boat dock, but returned intermittently throughout the day. We had a large boat for our group of 50 with 3 different levels, including 2 enclosed air-conditioned levels with seats, and an open-air deck on top for viewing. When I had researched things to do in Guilin, I kept coming across boat rides on small raft boats. I had really liked that idea, but with the rainy day, I was really glad to have a climate-controlled, enclosed boat.
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Family pic before the boat ride |
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Rafts |
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Beautiful views |
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Yummy, crunchy crab to eat on the boat. Charlotte loved it. |
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The 5 skinny mountains in the middle are called the Five Fingers |
The views were pretty, but the ride was a little long for the kids, especially Tommy. I came prepared for the weather with umbrellas, ponchos, jackets, long pants, but I should have brought more things for Tommy to do.
After our boat docked, we had a rainy walk through the town of Yangshou, a popular backpacking town in China, to get back to our bus. I had my eyes open for a potential souvenir, but didn't see anything I couldn't find in the market in Hong Kong so left empty-handed.
The rain stopped by the time our bus got back to the resort. We ate lunch and headed back over to the sports field. Tommy and I did archery and Tom played soccer with Charlotte.
Then we went back to the club so we could try KTV, the Chinese form of Karaoke, before dinner. The great thing about KTV is instead of singing to a crowd, you do it in a private room. We had a lot of fun and could be as silly (and off-key) as we wanted.
We had a wonderful day!