Today is our two month anniversary and we’re celebrating by taking a Li River Cruise! We were served breakfast at the hotel, checked out and met Julia at 8:30am for the drive to the boat. The cruise ends in Yangshuo, where we will spend two nights. We met wonderful people on the cruise from the east and west coast; it was a very wealthy group traveling with the Museum of Natural History from New York. They had a great guide from England who had lived in Hong Kong and was the first white person we heard speaking Mandarin. The cruise was about 4 and a half hours and included lunch, but the wealthy tour group had a boxed lunch from their hotel. It looked delicious, with sandwiches and Pringles! We were served a Chinese lunch, but we passed on the miniature fried crabs, whole fish and shrimp. We also refused to drink liquor out of a jar with a dead snake in it. There's only so far that we can go! Finally we arrived in Yangshuo and walked through their large market.

    Julia arranged a golf cart to our hotel, where our bags were waiting for us under a net. Late in the afternoon we waded through the stinky food market outside our hotel down to West Street, which is a wonderful tourist area with no cars or bikes. We had been craving pizza and steak and mashed potatoes and to our shock there was plenty of western food here and we found pizza on almost every menu! We had our pizza and steak, then went to have a drink and nachos at Jimmy’s because they had free internet. We met Julia at 7:30pm and went on a boat trip where we watched birds catching fish. The birds were cormorants and were trained to fish alongside the boat we were in. The fisherman tied a string around their throats so that they could not swallow the fish whole, and every once in a while they would grab the birds and dump the fish from their mouths into a basket. After about 15 minutes and 30 fish, the fisherman took off the strings and let the birds feed for a while. When stopped briefly to allow the birds to dry their wings, and Susan held one for a while. It was a large, wet bird with a huge wingspan, so it didn't take long before Susan was drenched. That was about it for the night!!