Guilin Evening Cruise and heading to Changsha

The amazing thing about this evening boat cruise - and they have them every night - at 7:25 and at 8:35 is what they can pack into a one hour tour - it is like a show - it is a show. Every building is lit with changing and multi color lights. There are stages with different performances going on - there is no audience sitting around - it is only for these boats that go slowly around the lakes and under the bridges - filled with tourists snapping pictures at a ridiculous rate! If you remember several posts ago I mentioned the cormorant birds and how they are used to fish - you can see in the picture how the fisherman grabs the bird when he comes back and somewhat chokes the fish out of the mouth - yikes. these fisherman are actually only doing it on this lake as a "show" and are only authorized to do this for the two hours the tourists are cruising the lakes - I think the rest of the time they are on the Li river selling fake jade to the tourists on the big boats! What a show! It was tremendous - as everything we are experiencing is. We walked the town a bit before saying our good-byes to the folks we wouldn't meet up with later in the trip. there were a number of families that were also traveling to Changsha - some on flights like us, others on another overnight train (never again for us!).

This finishes a large portion of our trip- the heritage tour portion. By date, it is the 10th of July. On the 11th of July we traveled (uneventfully) to Changsha and was the only day on our trip that we took absolutely no pictures. We arrived in Changsha late afternoon on the 11th and drove to our hotel. One thing I have forgotten to point out that every city we visited before (as well as all the cities we visited for the first time for that matter) has grown or changed tremendously - every city has a completely new or totally renovated and expanded airport. New buildings abound and everywhere you look construction cranes are positioned, busy -- with high rises going up before your eyes. We were amazed how much Changsha had grown in the almost 8 years since we were last here. We stayed at the exact same hotel as we stayed when Hannah was put in our arms. It was still a nice hotel, but definitely more run down since we were last there. Fortunately we arrived late afternoon, could settle down and go to a Chinese version of a food court - they call it the food street - where they have different cuisines of China being cooked in every corner of the restaurant and you go up to the area, point to what looks interesting and then give them an electronic key you are given, and then they deliver the food to your table. We found enough that the kids would eat - noodle soups, dumplings, sauteed vegetables, etc. and had a pretty good dinner, got to bed fairly early to get ready for our trip to Hannah's orphanage!