On the third day of our little adventure we booked a tour guide for the day. She is a local and grew up in a small town where her dad farmed rice. Shandy hired us a Tuktuk and took us around to see all the scenic spots near by. There are a lot of Kumquat trees that are now wrapped with plastic to keep the frost and ice from damaging them.
The drive was very cold and we bundled up as best as we could. The view was worth being a little cold!

Next, our guide took us too an old stone village. There are only a few houses left standing that are built only with stones and no binding material. These buildings are now only used for storage and the people live in newer houses built with bricks. 

Shandy told us about another man that had been on a tour with her who wrote a poem about his walk, she shared it later through email. I love it and think that it expresses the feeling of being in that area so well.

Next we went to tour the Goldwater cave, have a mud bath and soak in the hot springs. The cave was pretty cool, although I think it would have been better with out all the coloured lights and if we would have learned more about the science and history of the area from our guide (one from the caves, not Shandy). But the mud bath was fun and the hot spring pool was the perfect way to warm up on a cold day. At the caves there was a photographer who would follow us around and take pictures and then want us to buy them for 15yuan later (about 2 dollars), I gave in and bought a few! Here are a couple that I scanned with my Ipad (they are really hard to see).

Before going home we ate supper near Moon Hill, and saw a Banyan tree that was over one thousand years old.

That night we went back to our hostel, showered and then went and did a bit of shopping before going to bed.

The next day we were up early and boarding a tour bus at 7:30am. Our tour bus took us up into the Longji rice terraces scenic area to two local villages. The first was the Huangluo Yao Village (The long hair village) where we toured some of the older buildings and then watched the local people sing and dance. The next village was Ping' an village where we ate some local food and then had free time to hike up the stairs to see the gorgeous view.

During the show they served us some tea, we were only allowed to use one chop stick to drink the tea. If we used two that meant that you wanted to stay and would have to stay there for the night. We were the only english people on our tour and I think the guide was really worried that we might use two by mistake, because he kept repeating it to us over and over. 

At the end some of the women took their hair down to show us how long it was. They only cut it twice in their lifetime, and even then they have to keep their cut hair. I also got to dance with them, and then at the end when we left the building they pinched our buts! This is apparently the way that they show you love, I am suspicious that it is just away to play around with tourists though! Hahaha. 

When we were just getting ready to leave the rice terraces and meet our guide at the bus our guide found us and informed us that there was a problem. There had been a rock slide across the road and buses couldn't get through! We had two choices: hike by ourselves for four hours to Dazhai village where we had planned to stay the night, or hike for one hour with the group to the next village and take the bus back to Guilin early, we chose to stick with the tour group. This ended up being a gorgeous hike through the rice terraces. Here are some pictures I took with my Iphone along the way:

On the bus ride back to Guilin we texted our tour guide from the day before and asked her if she new of a good place to stay for the night because we had no where to go. She put us in contact with a friend of hers that was also on his way to Guilin and he met us at the bus and helped us book a Chinese hotel for the night. It had super hard beds and a smelly bathroom, but it did for the night and we went to bed exhausted from a long day. Because we were in Guilin early we didn't know what to do, our train didn't leave until 9pm the next night and we woke up to pouring rain, so we decided to go to the train station to see what our other options were. After asking around we found someone who could speak some English and she ended up helping us book a bus leaving just after noon. So we went back to the hotel to get our bags and met back at the bus station. The bus ended up being a sleeper bus with beds and warm blankets. 

We were so happy to be riding the bus for 8hrs instead of sitting up in the train for 12. It was great except for a couple unfortunate events. A young girl who was above and to the left of me got sick and puked over the railing on to the floor and my blanket, about 20 min into the bus ride. Her mom got down, apologized, cleaned it up as best as possible, and got me a new blanket. I felt bad for her. In addition there was an old man and his grandson sitting behind Chelsey, and both of them were puking into bags off and on for the entire trip! I felt so bad for those people, but it was also a little uncomfortable for us. When we finally got into Guangzhou, the bus was driving along and one of the drivers motioned us to come up to the front of the bus, we had no idea why and they didn't speak English. For some reason the bus pulled off to the side of a major highway and we had to get off, we were so confused why we were the only ones being pushed out onto the highway. But there was a taxi there waiting and so we got him to drive us back into Clifford and arrived home around 10pm and were able to sleep in our own beds.
It was a great trip and I can't wait to do more! We saw and did so much in a such short amount of time. We have our next trip planned already for over Chinese New Year holiday to Indonesia with Chelsey and her friend from Alberta!

Christmas did not feel the same this year! There was lots of decorations around the city, Christmas music playing in every store, lights and more. But family and home was missing. So Christmas day was just another day of the year, but Christmas holidays was one of the coolest things I have done in China so far. 
My roommate and I decided to get away, and it just happened that as a nice little gift on Christmas day I got my 1 year China resident visa meaning that I could now book trains and flights in and out of China. We decided to go to Guangxi province to the west of us where we could get out of the city and see some of rural China.
On Christmas day we headed to our companies main office to pick up my passport and visa. One of the assistants had booked our train for us so we paid her for them and ventured to the train station to figure out how to get our tickets. Originally someone was supposed to come with us to help us pick them up, but no one was available so we were on our own. We ended up getting them after a few hiccups and found out that our train that we thought left at 4pm didn't leave until 7:50pm, so we had some time to spare and went to a park near by to waste time.

After what seemed like forever we arrived at the train station and were soon boarded and on our way. We had a 12 hr train ride and were sitting in the seats instead of the sleeper beds. Next time we will get the soft beds for sure! But we managed to get a little sleep and arrive in Guilin around 8am, an hour and a half behind schedule. 

When we got off the train we really had know idea where to go. We knew that we wanted to get to Yangshuo and we knew there were buses but didn't know when or where. Right after we got off the train and were walking in to the station a lady asked if we needed any help or info, she was from the tourist information centre. We went with her colleague up to the centre and ended up booking a Li River cruise and a bus to Yangshuo. Even though it was really cold and rainy we decided that it would be fun to take the bamboo boat cruise down the river. 

The river and the Karst hills surrounding were breathtaking. It was so beautiful and peaceful, a nice break from the city. After we got off the boats the group was taking a break and I headed over to the fire where some of the locals were warming up. I asked to take a picture and one lady blushed and shyed away and the others were laughing, then they motioned me to be in the picture and another girl took it for me.

After the cruise there was an optional tour where we got to tour a small village, float on a real bamboo raft, watch a demostration of a fisherman fish with cormorants and hang out with some Water Buffalo. This was my FAVOURITE part, especially watching the cormorants. 

The guy in the picture below was singing for part of the way and when I took a picture of him this is what he did!

Here is a short video...

After this amazing tour the bus dropped us off in Yangshuo and we managed to successfully find our way to our hostel. We booked the hostel through one of the grade 1 student's mom, who gave us the number and said it was a good place to stay. We had no idea what it would really be like, but we totally lucked out; There were 6 bunk beds and we were the only ones staying there, there was a nice bathroom with a western toilet (which becomes quite the luxury) and a hot shower. The beds were softer than my own and they had electric blankets. Most buildings here aren't heated so it is very cold inside in the winter, but between the nice blankets and the warm electric pad we were cozy warm. This place was above a cafe/bar/restaurant, so we had to walk through the seating area and into the back and then upstairs to get to our room. That night we explored the streets around our rooms and met with a tour guide that we booked for a following day to discuss plans. Then we had a great night sleep and were well rested for the following day.