A slow boat to China...

Travel tip: Knowing when people are trying to screw you is key. If you suspect it, take their picture in case the police need it later.

Also, a shout out to my new friend Johnas who should be in Vietnam by now on his way to a much needed rest on the beaches of Thailand. So jealous!

I had a beautiful cruise on the Li River yesterday. The classical landscape is amazing and I am so glad that I came to the Guilin area. I showed up at 8am to catch my bus to the boat cruise and I noticed another westerner was signing up to go. Being the shy wallflower that I am, we struck up a conversation. Johnas is from Sweeden and traveling after completing his military service. He was certainly a chatty Kathy and I don't think he stopped talking all day.

To give you an idea of what the mountains look like, picture a flat plain. Then add the type of rolling yet separate hills that you may have drawn as a child. Sort of like that yeah. There are not really valleys as the spaces between hills are flat like North Dakota. Now also picture them covered in green. This includes all kinds of vegetation, trees, shrubs, and so on.

To be sure that I was still in China, people never stop trying to sell you something. We were looking at the scenery from the observation deck of the ship and I saw two men on a "boat" four bamboo polls wide that was coming dangerously close to our boat, but they didn't seem worried. Figuring this happens all the time and ends in near misses, I waited for the boat to be left in our wake. Instead, I never saw it in the back. The two men had latched onto our tour boat and were hawking lumps of crystal a jade carvings. One man was even selling to the top deck by standing on the lower deck railing with only his toes. I was amazed and went to the otherside of the boat to avoid their calls to buy junk.

At this point you're wondering: Where did today's travel tip come from? Yes you are observant. Before we got on the boat, the lady tour guide who only spoke Chinese told me that there would only be one ticket for myself and Johnas. This was not true as all the Chinese people on the tour had already gotten their tickets. I stood at the boat entrance and would not move until she gave us both tickets. After watching her scurry around, magically another ticket appeared. Johnas had taken a picture just in case we would have needed to talk to any authorities. Things ended quite fine.