Unfortunately... I can't post pics of the day's main adventure. It was called "white water rafting" in the tour guide. We have renamed it "Extreme Chinese White Water Bumper Boats." Have you ever seen those Asian game tv shows- similar. We had on these flimsy helments, life jackets, knee pads and elbow pads (made out of the same material as sweatbands- hahahaha- we looked awesome!) I'm not sure if anyone will ever be able to understand the experience without going themselves (not sure I would recommend it though actually due to safety hazzards). Imagine 1000 people going down a Class 3-4 white water course with no paddles and manmade slides over small waterfalls- at the SAME time. Imagine 1000 people who have never been rafting before and somehow think that it is an amusement park ride- totally passive. Meg's and my raft tipped after the first fall due to some people who were stuck in front of us (just sitting there) and another group that came up behind us. We were slightly shaken, but just fine. We got back in and I was determined not to let it happen again because Megs was quite scarred even before we got started. I started yelling at people when they got stuck- telling them they should help themselves or they would die (slightly dramatic, I know). They couldn't understand what I was saying anyways. Another time there were about 15-20 rafts in a pile-up. We were trying to tell a couple who's raft was caught under the water and about to flip that they should get out so they didn't get sucked under someone else's raft and the man's reply was "don't worry, it's no problem, it's so comfortable (actually he said "how shufu" which means, how comfortable), referring to the water rushing over he and his wife. Another time, two guys were stuck and we were ramming into them because they were blocking the way and several other rafts were coming at us... we are trying to tell them to help us push and the response that time was "it is impossible." haha. I learned a lot about Chinese culture that day. It was fun, but really really ridiculous. There were some pretty awesome drops.
The pic is our hostel.
Bused to Guilin and flew to Shanghai in the evening (another delayed flight). Slept good in Shanghai (at a real hotel- shnazzy).
No comments:
Post a Comment