Goodness knows how many photos I took, a lot of them repetitive I know. But you'll be pleased to hear we've finally arrived in Yangshuo.
Do you recall the flowery description of today's cruise - well what it omitted to say is that the "village" now has a population of c.340,000!
The landing stage.
One last shot of the scenic view.
We then had about a kilometre walk along the side of the river and up to the road. We were under cover of this roof and souvenir/food stalls lined the way but Raymond wasn't keen for anyone to stop. I saw a lovely cotton coverall I wanted to buy but he assured me we'd see loads of them in town.
Once up at street level we then had the option to walk to the hotel, another 2kms, or to get a wally train. Much to Raymond's surprise as it was quite hot, a good few of us elected to walk.
This guy seemed to be attaching chain to his fishing nets, maybe to weight them?
And we'll never know if this guy was sleeping off a liquid lunch or just plain tired.
Ready for a cloudburst but with today's sunny weather it must have felt like being in a greenhouse
A speciality of the region is 3 flower wine and it's sold in these bamboo presentation cases. We didn't try any but at 53% ABV I think we'd have fallen over just smelling it.
Unfortunately these are selfie sticks. We've seen signs banning them in several places but no one seems to take any notice. One of our group has one!
This is Bauhinia purpurea, common name Orchid Tree.
The area close to our hotel is all newly built and mostly shops but we have no idea of the significance of the Pink Panther (but it does make for easy orientation).
And this is the view from our hotel room.
Our hotel is perfectly nice and clean but just a little bit odd.
The decor reminds me of Scandinavian minimalism and it's the only room so far without a fridge. We asked in reception if there was anywhere we could go to get some ice (to chill our wine of course) and a very helpful person directed us to a newly built underground supermarket (so newly built that we had to climb over builders and their rubble). Unfortunately they didn't sell bagged ice cubes but I had a light bulb moment and with a bit of sign language and a lot of smiles I persuaded the fishmonger to shovel some of his ice into a carrier bag - I think Ian was well impressed!