Just some of it

It is hard to chronicle all the the events, thoughts and people of a vacation in any amount of space-- so I choose to scrawl on this simple medium some things that stick out from my time in Yangshuo.
My train from Wuhan to Gailin was long, and was even longer from Gailin to Wuhan. On the train, each cab has "drinking water". This drinking water is steaming hot water that people put in 3 or 4 liter thermos that are in each compartment (6 beds). I can't imagine anyone drinking this water because it is about 190 degrees, but you can use it in your noodle cups. If you are really Chinese, you buy 2 or 3 cups of noodles before you get on the train. Then, when you are hungry you fill it with drinking water, and eat your noodles and drink your tea. Well, I was Chinese and did the same. Basically, they are spicy roman noodles. Enough sustanance to get you to your destination.
Most of time when I looked out the window, I saw farmland. They farm a lot here. In the city, on the medians and little patches of land outside their apartments, there is always something growing. The rice is about to be harvested for the second and last time this year. They also grow many different types of fruits and teas. Everything is farmed by hand, so the fields are smaller than I am used to, and there are more people working the fields. No machines are used-- just people arched from carrying lettuce their whole life, or sowing seeds by hand.
I think that if you are going to read a classic novel, you need to give it at least 100 pages before you give up on it. Like I said earlier, I was reading Brothers Karamozov all week. Great book, and I am very interested to read more these days. I have been pretty bad about reading as much as I said I would. I blamed it on not have anywhere comfortable to read in my apartment. Don't believe me. It was a cop out.
I still haven't gotten used to the Chinese toilets. It is a squatter. Basically, there is nothing to sit on, and it is just a hole in the ground, with a little basin. It flushes the same, but it is level with the floor. If you have ever been to China, or maybe seen a Chinese person pass the time-- they probably demonstrated the China-squat: feet flat on the ground, knees bent, and but about 4 inches off the ground. It works for sitting around, I guess it works for going to the bathroom.
Yangshuo was very touristy. Normally I would have not liked it, but I realized that I was a tourist, so it was ok if I did the touristy things. I rode a bamboo raft down the river for 2 hours, went for a bike ride, bought Chinese trinkets at local shops, ate western food at their restraunts, and even bought a shirt from a local vendor. It was a fun experience, and I would recommend Yanghsuo to any westerner looking for a place to ease them into China. China is very different, and it is a nice buffer for those looking not to shock themselves.
I guess this scrawl turned out to be events, so the next one will be thoughts.

(The picture of the top was one of the little levees that our bamboo raft had to be pushed over. Conviently, it also was a great place to try to sell tourist things, complete with monkeys to take your picture with and a camel.)