The perfect day - China

Yesterday was a very good day in China, probably our best since coming here. We woke up fairly early to the sound of roosters and the sun streaming in through the skylights - neither of which was going to damper my mood as 1. there were roosters and birds just outside and 2. the sun was shining through the blue skies and 3. there was no busy highway anywhere around. We were in the China that we came here looking for and had almost given up hope of finding.

The morning was spent relaxing in the hostel's hammocks and enjoying their wonderful, western style breakfasts but after a few hours we were itching to see more of the countryside so we rented a couple of bicycles and set off for the Dragon bridge. Along the way we bumped into a group of people that we had met in a hostel in Guilin and some others that had joined them along the way. We passed a Chinese lady who asked if we were going to Dragon bridge and when we said yes, she decided to become our defacto guide. Good thing too because it wasn't the easiest place to find so we appreciated her presence pointing the way at every junction.

The karst scenary was there in full glory as the backdrop for the rice and various vegetable fields and little villages. We stopped to rest by trickling streams, spotted chickens which had got loose in the rice fields, little children probably going home from school for lunch, water buffaloo having a swim, locals tending their fields and most importantly very few people around. We felt like we were having a genuine countryside experience, seeing how real farmers lived.

Once at the Dragon bridge - which is just a brick bridge which local rumour says that it was built by farmers several hundreds of years ago without the use of any cememt, our guide asked if we would like to go to her family restaurant for su fan which we think means lunch. It was lunch time and without any other reason to pick a different restaurant, we went along. Turns out that the dining tables and chairs are on bamboo rafts with little roofs on the river, tied to the restaurant. We tried the home-made rice wine as well as some meat, veg and tofu dishes all washed down with the local ice beer. Perfect.

After lunch, the others decided to keep cycling while Johan and I caught a bamboo raft back down the river, with our bicycles on the back. Again, the scenary along the river was beautiful and the ride was peaceful... until we came to one of the levees in the river which occured every 500m or so. The river seems to be terraced, like the rice fields, we're guessing that it's to help the farmers channel water through their fields when they need to flood them. What it meant for us was that each time we had to go over a little water slide in our bamboo raft - which was sometimes a little scary and always a little wet!

We got dropped off about 15 minutes cycle from the hostel so we made it back just before dark. Sitting down in the outside restaurant/beer garden, we shared a bottle of local flour liquour with an american guy we met and chatted politics and travel ideas and ate lemon chicken and rice. In all, a wonderful day.