Scooters and Cormorants

(Emily)

hi everyone. today was our free day in yangshuo! after a fitful night on box springs (better for your back?), we were ready to greet the day with gusto and verve. it started off cloudy , but by midmorning the sky had cleared up into a gorgeous sunny day (the second we've had so far), so team china was pretty stoked about the activities we had planned for ourselves. we had decided pretty early on that we wanted to go electric scootering instead of biking around the villages since they just seemed so much...faster. our tour guide of yesterday, rico, had pointed terry in the direction of uncle sam, a tour guide who rented scooters and bikes. he had an office on west street and we were his very first customers of the day (we got there before it technically opened). he was really nice and asked us where we wanted to go, showing us a map of yangshuo and the surrounding areas. we opted for the one less traveled by tourists and after some confusion and scooters not being charged enough, we were off!

we were quite the sight. cady got her powder blue scooter while i got yellow, a scooter that was....yellow to co-ordinate with my ginormous suitcase, also known as big yellow. nick had the same blue one as cady while drew and terry had the same yellow one as me. ric was special in that he got a very sleek silver scooter. after a rudimentary lesson on the controls of the scooter, we were on the main road, making a left turn with bikes and scooters and trucks (oh my indeed) whizzing by us, giving the stinkeye to the scared tourists. after a while on the main road, the traffic thinned out until we were the only ones on the wide open road, with mountains sprouted up in front of us with farms in the forefront. but the interesting part came when sam led us to a lesser road (read: dirt path) to a farming village, complete with stray dogs and water buffalo. it was so pretty, with trees of mandarin oranges flanking us and the mountains gleaming from the sunlight in the backdrop that we were speechless for a while. there were people working in the fields and people sunning themselves outside, appreciating the nice weather with a game of cards. the simple and happy life of the farmers made everything else seem so complicated in comparison (hold on while i charge my phone, ipod, camera, and laptop).

we also rode a water buffalo! there was a man farming in a field where we had stopped to take pictures of the li river and our surroundings. after taking pictures of him and the water buffalo (he was happily posing with it), he offered to let get on it. terry, nick, drew, cady, and i all jumped at the opportunity. i can now say that i have sat on the back of a water buffalo!

while our tour was supposed to last two hours, we didn't want it to stop and kept going. i took a couple of spills because of my habit of running over the divots in the road instead of around them, but it was worth it. i'd do it all again in a heartbeat. the view was breathtaking... rice paddies, orange trees, verdant mountains, dusty paths, traditional houses... i can't even begin to describe the happy feelings and calm that was washing over me as we were going through the small villages that looked so untouched by modernity. i didn't see any iphones! for the next group going to china: we all highly recommend renting scooters from uncle sam with a tour. scooters are faster than bikes, so we got to see more than if we had biked. not to mention the exhilaration of cruising around, on the bumpy roads, with the wind in your hair. it's all very lord of the rings, zelda-esque (team china has an obsession with lotr, zelda, and narnia... in fact, i just bought the ONE RING, which i found in a silver shop on west street)

we also went cormorant fishing with one of uncle sam's friends. we went at 7:30, the sun had already set, and met at the wharf. his friend had about five cormorants and a long wooden motor boat (which had a computer onboard). the li river was eerie at night, illuminated by only the lamps that were hanging off the bow of the boat to attract the fish. i kept thinking of the effect that the water gave in titanic, with the light reflecting off the water, flickering onto the stone cliffs. the cormorants were so cool! they have little mohawks and sounded like hippogriffs from harry potter. they were also really playful, nipping each other and splashing around on the river. they were tame and didn't have any leashes connecting them to the boat, but they did have strings around their neck to prevent them from swallowing the fish. once they had caught a fish, the fisherman would scoop them up on a pole and shake the fish from their beaks.

well that's all for today! zaijian!