The following day, I was on my own again. My Chinese friends have left for Guangzhou and I left by myself again. A highly recommended activity here is the river cruise from the town of Xingping 兴平. Xingping town itself is an hour away from Yangshuo itself. I took a bus from the Yangshuo bus station and took the lazy bus ride to Xingping.
Xingping itself is blissfully undertouristed. You do not see the hordes of tourists here in Xingping. Actually where the bus lets you off, it is still a distance to the river cruise. So I took a motorcycle ride to bring me to the dock. It was a rough ride which I wasn’t expecting since I thought this was a very touristed area. The rafts here were almost of the same type as the ones I had the previous day.
As for the rates, there is the official rate and then there is the discounted rate. With the discounted rate they removed the tax. This also means that the ride does not go through the tourism authorities, which means they are illegal, however, this also means that more money would go to the boatman. The danger with this is that there are regular river police which patrol the river for any unauthorized cruises. I decided to take the chance with the discounted trip being the tightwad that I am.
The cruise is on the Li River 漓江 and immediately spectacular. The limestone mountains are much closer to the shore here and look very imposing. What I liked about this it that there weren’t as much people here in Xingping than the one in Yangshuo. This probably the idyllic Yangshuo that I have been dreaming of. Unfortunately for me, the sky is still as gloomy as it was the previous day. The gray skies leave the mountains and river with little color.
Just then, my driver told me that he was warned of the coming of the river police. So we have to pull ashore or else he will get caught. Apparently, this is a common practice among the boatmen here and they already have a watchdog in place. All of the other unauthorized boat trips also stopped and pulled over waiting for the river police to pass.
Sure enough, the river police passed by, and some of the other boat riders started to brave the river again. My boat man was too nervous that he decided to wait it out. Apparently, they will not catch you if you do not have passengers on board. Oh well, it is not that I don’t want this to happen either. The place is too beautiful to let something like this ruin the moment.
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