Posted from Guilin, Guangxi, China.

arriving in Youngshou -China after Hong Kong

Many uncomfortable hours later we arrive in Youngshou and are dropped off in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of town. This is a scam which is run by the local touts in company with the bus drivers. You are effectively at their mercy as its 5am, there is no clue as to where to go. The bus then drives into town, and drops off the Chinese people who can easily walk to their hotels.
We didn’t learn about this till much so we piled into a Tuk Tuk and drove to a hotel. A guy(Robert – his English name anyway) accompanied us and told us he was the hotel manager.(Um no – just a professional tout). Room was 150Yuan and on the 6th floor. He says it’s a great room we should look at it. I complained 6th floor? The internet would not work that high and my knees were no good. He convinced us to look, I made it to the 3rd floor and said nup, bugger this and walked back down. Nici went up, to find from the 6th floor she could see down the back lane… we were in the shitty part of town very far from the river. This was really NO good as we had nice plans for here and we just wanted to relax with a nice view of the river. We said no to Robert dismay and our tuk tuk driver then went to the river, where we tried to find a few more places, but none had 3 nights available in a row. The the tuk tuk driver recommended a place on the river about 1klm away, we looked at it and though it was smoky and dirty from the previous occupants, we took it as it was right on the river and had a lovely view.

So if you ever want to travel to these regions its important to be aware of these tout and there scams/storys.
Robert tried to book us in for 3days of tours right away, but we said we are too tired and I ( Nici) was getting really pissed off with his pushiness, we wanted a rest day… he went on to tell us it was due to rain in 2 days so we needed to get organized. He would give us good discounts. I excused myself to go upstairs, checked the weather forecast for the next 3 days(fine). Came back downstairs and started negotiating. Robert’s tour prices ended up being halved; after we told him we knew the real price of the tours, and were happy to book them direct ourselves. We could have got them cheaper if we organized them ourselves, but were happy to book them through Robert as we knew that with our pushed schedule, he would likely be able to get it all organized faster and in the best order, which turned out to be true. He did a bang up job in the end, organizing all buses, connecting tuk tuk rides, boat rides, he gave us a guided tour of the surrounding farmlands which was perhaps the most fun(he did need to be reminded that he’d promised this… he thought at first riding past some fields and waving a them as we sped past on the way to the river rafting constituted this farmlands tour till we explained, actually, no, it didn’t).He also booked us Cormorant fishing tickets(Richard loved this… yes yes, its exploitation of animals but we eat Pork so i(Richard) can’t claim to much righteousness when it comes to animal welfare.) The only time he stung us really was when we went to a restaurant and we bought lunch… from the English menu. The next day we ordered similar food from a better restaurant for 50% less. Even their English menu was 30% less and when we got the Chinese menu, it was a hefty 50% less. Oh well. You can’t stay on your toes all the time – it hurts your feet to much and spoils your adventure.
Youngshou ended up being everything and more than we hoped for. Its a beautiful place that you could easily spend a couple of weeks at. Ayesha and I also got to see the most amazing light show on the river involving 600 cast. I was totally blown away since I love things like this. The Chinese don’t do anything halfhearted. We also spend a day bamboo rafting and the kids got water shooters that kept them very happy.