After our cave tour we headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags and headed to our new hotel - the lovely 5 star Sheraton - where when we walked in our room - it was a 2.5 bathroom suite -- two bedrooms, living room and we immediately called room service, ordered burgers and pizza and hunkered down. We needed just a chill-out night and this was perfect. However, we had to pack up the next day - just for one night - and stored all our other luggage at the hotel, because we were going to be back the following night! So we were off for a Li River scenic cruise -- a lunch 3.5 hour cruise. We had the opportunity to really appreciate the beauty of Guilin....and we took the boat to Yangshuo, where our bus driver would meet us for our overnight in Yangshuo. These are the pictures of the boats before we got in - note the mountains of Guilin in the background - these are all limestone mountains! The yellow boat is ours - This is our group walking onto the boat. Let me tell you about the man on the small boat. These are fisherman. they make these boats out of either 3 big bamboo trees or 3 large size PVC piping (or that is what we thought) and their primary reason for being out there at night (this was daytime) is to catch fish using the cormorant
bird. It is an amazing thing to watch - although we were all concerned that the birds were suffering from this - but we were told they weren't. These birds are trained - (they have a chain around their neck which prevents them from swallowing big fish) to catch fish. they are kept on the boat and do a lot of sleeping and then a few times a day they "fish". They are let go, they jump in the water and dive - and dive very deep. They catch a big fish and come back to the boat. Their "master" then takes them by the neck (really) and squeezes the fish up their long throat into their mouth, grabs it and puts in in a basket - their reward is they get lots of small fish to eat regularly and so they don't fly away to far (and I guess they are smart enough to realize they can't swallow the big birds with this chain on so they bring them back in order to get the small birds). during the day there aren't many of these fishermen, but at night (and will show you actual pictures of the action further in this blog) they do this regularly. During the day - they have their boats loaded with cheap fakes of "jade" chachki and put their boats right up to the our boat, rope on and try to sell the tourists "stuff".
After our cave tour we headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags and headed to our new hotel - the lovely 5 star Sheraton - where when we walked in our room - it was a 2.5 bathroom suite -- two bedrooms, living room and we immediately called room service, ordered burgers and pizza and hunkered down. We needed just a chill-out night and this was perfect. However, we had to pack up the next day - just for one night - and stored all our other luggage at the hotel, because we were going to be back the following night! So we were off for a Li River scenic cruise -- a lunch 3.5 hour cruise. We had the opportunity to really appreciate the beauty of Guilin....and we took the boat to Yangshuo, where our bus driver would meet us for our overnight in Yangshuo. These are the pictures of the boats before we got in - note the mountains of Guilin in the background - these are all limestone mountains! The yellow boat is ours - This is our group walking onto the boat. Let me tell you about the man on the small boat. These are fisherman. they make these boats out of either 3 big bamboo trees or 3 large size PVC piping (or that is what we thought) and their primary reason for being out there at night (this was daytime) is to catch fish using the cormorant
bird. It is an amazing thing to watch - although we were all concerned that the birds were suffering from this - but we were told they weren't. These birds are trained - (they have a chain around their neck which prevents them from swallowing big fish) to catch fish. they are kept on the boat and do a lot of sleeping and then a few times a day they "fish". They are let go, they jump in the water and dive - and dive very deep. They catch a big fish and come back to the boat. Their "master" then takes them by the neck (really) and squeezes the fish up their long throat into their mouth, grabs it and puts in in a basket - their reward is they get lots of small fish to eat regularly and so they don't fly away to far (and I guess they are smart enough to realize they can't swallow the big birds with this chain on so they bring them back in order to get the small birds). during the day there aren't many of these fishermen, but at night (and will show you actual pictures of the action further in this blog) they do this regularly. During the day - they have their boats loaded with cheap fakes of "jade" chachki and put their boats right up to the our boat, rope on and try to sell the tourists "stuff".
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