Bits of an email to Nikki

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Traveling has been a blast. We are in Yangshuo right now which is this cool town kind of out of the way with Han villages all around it. The first day, we rented mountain bikes and biked to the Yulong River where we got on these bamboo rafts and rafted for a while. We then biked a bit further to the bottom of Moon Hill, which we hiked, and then biked home. On the way home, we met these orange pickers and asked if we could come back and help them pick oranges the next day. I know this sounds random, but it was pretty awesome. We wanted to get to know some local people and maybe get an invite home for dinner. So the next day we spent the morning doing internet and setting up rockclimbing for the next day and making phone calls and what not and then in the afternoon, we walked to the place and picked oranges. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to walk there and find the place. After we picked for a while, they invited us home to dinner. That was a lot of fun. They had a HUGE family and they all ate together and they were happy to have us. After dinner, they offered us a ride home, but the guy that was going to drive had been drinking Bai Jiu all night long (it has bout 57% alcohol - it's China's fastest and cheapest way to get shitfaced), so we decided to walk. Mind you, we are in rural china and a very long ways away from home. It was PITCH BLACK. We had flash lights, but it was still f-ing scary. We had some close calls with wild dogs and got lost a few times in the fields, but it all turned out ok. It was an adventure. When we got back to our guesthouse, we pigged out on chocolate and crepes. Today was rock climbing - it's the second time I've gone since in China, and I think we are planning to go once more once we get to Behai. Today we did 4 climbs and the last two were rated 5-9 and 5-9+, which is pretty impressive for beginners. One of them was just really fricken tall, more than twice as tall as a normal climb. The last bit of it was fairly easy, if you had the energy to do it. By the time I reached the top, I just wanted to die. None of my muscles are working right now, and I'm guessing I'll be worse tomorrow. Ack!
Tomorrow we start hard core trekking through rice fields. We are going to bounce from village to village in an area a little north of Yangshuo and actually wind up one province up. It's going to be very very dirty and lots of hiking with all of our stuff involved. A little more hard core than I had originally signed up for, but I think it will be fun. Might as well go out with a bang, right? And Katie and Trevor are the perfect traveling partners. The other day, when I suggested farming for a day, I kind of expected to get shot down, but they were both up for it. No one else in this group would have been up for it, so it's pretty lucky that I wound up with them.
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