Bailey's Tours- Adventure and Travel.: Yichang-Luzhou by train and bus

20th-28th September Yichang-Luzhou-
We were right to wait and see what the upgrade was like on the train, not good unfortunatley. It was not the usual standard for a soft sleeper , the train was old so standards on cleaniness suffered (Water was heated by a coal burner in he corridor!) The previous trains hard sleepers were definitely better. This was now time to sleep in our cotton sleepers to be on the safe side, the sheets were a bit grey and stained.
We arrived at our destination early hours in the morning, nobody in our group had had any sleep so we were all tired and feeling a bit grumpy, especially when we found out we still had another 2 hour bus ride to Yangshuo, this destination was for three nights where we stayed at the Lucky Hotel.
This was one of the smallest towns where we stayed with a population of only 300,000 people ,a bit of a change to when we stayed in Chong Qing which had a population of 32 million.
We have never experienced landscape like it. In this area there were 20,000 mountains all of which were shaped a bit like a pyramid. Almost shaped like a mountain that many four year old children would draw as a mountain.
This place was very touristy with a lot of westernised people there. One of the most touristy places we have seen so far in China. We experienced more spectacular views as we sampled the local sampons and punted up the river Li.
Steve got into the local culture by showing off with Cormarants balancing on his shoulder via a bamboo post.
The following day we went on an 2 hour bike ride to a local village, this was really good. Steve and I experienced the tandem for the first time which was good fun. We went to local farmers house for our lunch where we have never experienced as many vegetables cooked in their various ways over their oven .(Basically a small cast iron barbecue device.)
On the evening we went on a night fishing trip. We did not need fishing rods or nets, the usual tools for fishing, we just watched the cormrants( very agile birds) catch the fish ,much better than the HSBC advert on TV.. Once the fish were in the cormarants beak, the guide would hook them out of the water, squeeze their neck so that the fish would be deposited in the bucket. It was fantastic watching the way this was done. The birds worked very hard for the fishermen, luckily sometimes the birds managed to eat the fish when the guide was not looking so there were advantages for them
We had a bit of spare time to look around the shops, sample the food and bars which were excellent and fairly reasonable in price. Once we left the group we were invited to join some young chinese people who were also on holiday, this was a good experience. We found they like a good night out in the town as well and their view on English people was very interesting;They thought all English people were very polite,helpful and had excellent manners. (Obviously this was reaffirmed after us meeting them)
Today we had a cookery lesson we made dumplings, Chicken and an eggplant dish. Very educational, Steve looks the part in his hat and his apron. The dishes tasted impressive but there was lot of food. We have never ate as many dumplings.

We then sampled the local massage parlour before getting ready to go on our next overnight train to Hong Kong.