Our original plan was to go mountain biking again, but our plans were stalled by the first real rainfall of the trip.
Since any given activity in Yangshuo is weather-dependent, we were grounded. I spent some time in a cafe, reading Geoff Dyer's Out Of Sheer Rage while one of the restaurant workers dozed at a nearby table. Later, the others joined me at the restaurant and I had a one dollar grilled cheese sandwich, and Wallace had banana pancakes. (More about the pancakes in a bit.)
Finally, the weather cleared up, and we hired some bikes and a guide to take us bamboo rafting down the Li River; she took us down an easy bike ride, and deposited us at the wharf for the bamboo rafts. The boatmen threw our bikes on the back of the rafts, and we were off. The boatmen navigated by pushing long rods into the water - the Li is shallow and clear, and you can often see the bottom from the raft.
A short raft ride down the Li River lasts about an hour, and is extremely pleasant experience, assuming the weather is nice. We saw the scenery that China is legendary for: limestone rock formations shrouded by wisps of fog. Meanwhile, the raft hit some occasional rapids, and we would have to raise our legs to avoid getting our feet wet.
The amazing thing about the relatively underwhelming rapids of the Li River is that stationed at every fall is a photography raft, outfitted with a working PC and photo printer. That's right - we saw Dell workstations floating on the Li River. And we could even hear the Windows alert noise as we floated downstream. Wallace asked his boatman how they managed to get electricity on the river, and the answer was simple but unsettling: very long extension cables run from the nearby villages into the river.
After the boats dropped us off, our guide met us and led us to the site of the 1000 year old Banyan tree. There was some internal debate about whether paying $2 US to see a tree was actually worth it, but we were there, so why not. Unfortunately, all four of us got lost looking for the tree, which caused our guide to loudly question our intelligence in Mandarin.
The Banyan tree, you see, is quite big. It has a tremendously large canopy, shielding its enormous limb structure from the elements. Stepping inside its leaves is like stepping inside a cave. Legend has it that if you visit the Banyan tree once in your life, you will become precisely 20,000 times wealthier. Also, if you walk once around it, you will live to be 99 years old. Our longevity and financial security is now assured.
In the evening, we had dinner at an obnoxious nightclub/cafe, trying to eat while a group of Chinese tourists sang karaoke to histrionic Chinese love songs. Brian and I felt like having banana pancakes, but we wanted them with ice cream. So we went back to the site of Wallace's pancakes, and had Wallace instruct the waitresses to make the pancakes and top them with ice cream. This simple request BLEW THE WAITRESSES' MINDS. "Have you ever had this before?" they wanted to know. "Banana pancakes with ice cream! This is crazy!" they exclaimed. But they dutifully went into the kitchen, and returned with two banana pancakes: crepe-like desserts made with thin banana slices. And topped with vanilla and strawberry ice cream. The ice cream was a perfect complement to the pancake, and we congratulated ourselves on our culinary genius.
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