Guilin Cruise

It was hot here today!  I read the front page of the Anchorage Daily News, after hearing about it from Jane who told all the Alaskans about it, and learned that Anchorage has had the coldest summer on record! There have only been 7 days with 65 degrees so far! In fact, the Anchorage Daily News reported snow in the mountains! And it is only July!  So glad I missed it!!!

Gloomy summer set for infamy: Life | adn.com

On with China. We got on the bus at 8:30 for an hour to get to the place where we got on a boat for our 3 1/2 hour river cruise. We could see them cooking our lunch on the back of the boat. The tour guides warned us that the food wouldn't be very good, but it wasn't bad. They even picked up food along the way. A smaller boat would pull up the our the bigger tour boats and give them fresh fish and live chickens.  How about that for fast food?

On the way our tour guide gave us a little history of Guilin and talked about the Flying Tigers coming to protect the city during World War 2. One of our teacher's father was a Flying Tiger. He started singing, and we all joined in with "You are my Sunshine", one of the favorite songs of the pilots, and it was very moving. Such a history there is to learn about here. They love to remember the Flying Tigers and what they did to help them against the Japanese. 

We all sat down at tables for eight where we could view the sights out the window. Once underway we could go up top for some even better viewing. I can't even describe the beauty that we were able to see. It reminded us a little of the Kenai Fjords cruise. Very green with lots of trees. There were even some sheep in the mountains. There were families bathing or swimming (the children were naked), or washing clothes in the river. 

It was interesting to see flat boats come up and hook onto ours to try and sell us junk. There was also a lady on board who would come around selling jewlery and other local crafts. She sold this snake wine. It was gross looking with the snakes floating in the bottle. Ugg!

We took lots of pictures of other boats, scenery, water buffalo, commoran birds, the ones that catch fish for the fishermen, and. It was a beautiful sunny day, and several people got sunburns. But standing out on the deck of the boat witnessing the beauty was worth it!

Of course, after the boat ride there was time for shopping......I'm out of Chinese money!  I guess I will have to wait until Korea to change the rest into their money!  And the bargaining gets really old!

I bought a beautiful tablecloth today. She started at 800 yuan. I offered 100 and stuck to it, and she kept getting lower and lower and finally I accepted, but decided to look elsewhere. Since I knew I could get it for 100 yuan, (15 dollars) I tried to get it lower elsewhere. The trick is to not show them that you really want the item. You decide what to pay and then stick to it. I tried 80 at the next place and there was lots of babble about me cheating them, and I just said fine, 80 is my last price and walked away, and then they came after me..OK, OK, Lady, and I bought it. But, it does get old and I really don't like it when people grab my arm! Ugggg! You know me and germs.  Everyone has become pretty good at getting things cheaper. We are always in competition asking each other what we paid and getting a laugh when someone buys the same thing you do for way less! 

We headed back to the bus and went to the University where we watched a demonstration on painting. A woman created a beautiful painting for us in just over 5 minutes. Of course they wanted us to buy stuff there too!

Then onto our last dinner together as a group! Can't believe our time is almost over. And guess what? We had Chinese for dinner!

This will be the last post until Korea!  I most likely won't have time to post tomorrow night from Shanghai. We will be leaving for Korea on Saturday morning.