China rules

I'm in CHINA!!!! I love this place. Vietnam was kind of crap. We all got the feeling that we were being looked at with great disdain, and all anyone wanted was to get our money and get us out of their country. No one was ever mean to us but you just get that general feeling that you aren't welcome. But China RULES! Every person that we talked to yesterday was very very helpful. We got on a train Tuesday night in Hanoi, changed trains at 11 pm at the border, and got of at 7 am in Nanning. The woman at the bus station didn't speak a word of english, but she made a line of 6-8 chinese people wait while she did her very best to sell us a ticket to Guilin (which we thought went all the way to Yangshou), then left her post (and all the chinese folk) to walk us all the way around the block to a local bus that took us to the other bus station across town. On the bus, we weren't sure where we were going, and two old ladies pointed "further, further", so we made our bus just fine. We got off in Guilin where two people pointed us in the direction of the bus terminal, and perhaps the only english speaking person in the area came up to ask if we needed anything (I guess we looked lost and confused). Then a woman at the ticket window got us tickets and ushered us to our bus. The trains and buses are FANTASTIC - clean and nice. The sleeper train from the border was better than any of the hotels that we've stayed at - by far, like 500 thread count bedding and carpets on the floor.

We walked around Yangshou a bit last night, which Vicky aptly described as an apline sort of village, if the weather weren't hot and humid. So far China has been GENERALLY cleaner than Vietnam, but that's just on the surface. Apparently the whole country has a massive sewage issue. As in their infrastructure doesn't really support the need. Our hotel, for instance, is a reasonable place - clean beds at least, and the walls aren't TOO filthy compared to some of our previous accomodations. But we're having a MAJOR problem with the bathroom. The toilet is a squatter, which doesn't bother me at all anymore. In fact, I've decided that if you've got to use a public toilet, it's best not to have to touch anything. EXCEPT that in this case the toilet is in the middle of the floor (rather than a step up like most in Cambodia were, and it doubles as the shower drain. And the contents don't leave the premises. So imagine for a moment, hot shower water stirring up that lovely concoction. Then add on top of that a bout of food poisoning that we both seem to have managed to contract from the fried duck we had last night - at least that's what we *think* it came from. Not too bad, but we're both feeling a little "unsettled" and tired.

We dragged out of bed this morning and did a countryside tour on bikes with a woman that we met when we got off the bus yesterday. It was really nice. You know how you always see Chinese paintings of dramatic limestone mountains that seem to rise out of nothing? Well, that's what it really looks like here. We took a bamboo raft "cruise" down the dragon river. There's some serious entreprenurialship (sp?!) going on out here. The rafts are two bamboo chairs strapped to a raft of big bamboo poles. The "captain" steers by poling you down the shallow river. There are other rafts that are mobile markets where you can get fruit or hot soup, and some of them even have refridgerators onboard. The river drops in a few places, and the raft just gets pushed over a 3 ft drop (with us on board), and there are rafts at the lower level with people taking digital photos of you as you drop over the edge, and they have a full on desktop computer set up with color photo printer so that you can buy your pictures right there on the water!!! I have no idea where the electricity is coming from for this, but it's frickin cool!

Alright, I'm going to continue passing the night away and hope to wake up feeling better tomorrow. Probably doesn't help that the tea I drank before bed kept me up all night, but I'd just be happy to get my stomach to settle itself down. No worries, though, I'm a mobile pharmacy, and we've agreed to start a course of antibiotics tomorrow if we aren't feeling better. Take care!