Second day in Guilin

Our second day in Guilin took us to the Reed Flute Caves.  Apparently there are some reeds growing nearby which you can make into flutes - makes sense I guess.  The caves are brilliant - they have amazing stalactites and stalagmites growing in them.  They also have the classic Chinese twist - the ability to light them up in garish colours.  Greens and purples abound - I'm trying to put some photos up on flickr tonight - look for photos posted by trickymouse1 if it works (they should include Shanghai and wedding photos all being well).  The Chinese have a different way of displaying natural phenomena (the some colour regime was used for the trees surrounding the lakes in the centre of town).  Whereas we tend to go for just lighting stuff up in neutral colours and letting the features speak for themselves, colourful lighting seems to be the order of the day here.

After sampling the local delicacy last night (beer fish), we took a four and a bit hour boat trip over to Yangshuo this morning.  The guy who picked us up from the hotel appeared to have mastered English from American films and a book of idioms - not to say that we could really work out what he was going on about though.

Given our aversion for organised tours, you can imagine how delighted we were that we were in the "Panda team" for our trip to Yangshuo.  Thankfully, the tour only really got us to the boat and we were fairly free to roam about the boat as we pleased.  Yangshuo is lovely and the boat trip is spectacular.  One view is so great that it makes the back of the 20 yuan note.  Again, I'll try to get some photos up over the next day or so - if connection speed and patience allows.

We sat down by the river with our mandarin MP3s and we were befriended by a local independent tour guide who constantly reminded us how great his English was.  He was a likeable chap - a local farmer who realised that his traditional job was not going to be around forever, so he took it upon himself to learn English and become a tour guide.  It sounds like he did this by accosting tourists and trying out his English on them - to be fair it worked.  I admired his initiative - we may go out for a cycle ride with him in the next couple of days.