Yangshuo

Hello again! I'm taking a brief break from the beautiful scenery here in Yangshuo (located in the south of China) to give a quick update about how things have been going.



Pre-Yangshuo: not too much interesting stuff was going on. Sabine had to take a trip back to France to get her French citizenship (and she's still there), so I've been back to the work, sleep, eat, party lifestyle for a while.



Yangshuo: Dan and Elliott (two good friends of mine) arrived in Beijing on Friday and we left the next day for Yangshuo. It's basically a small (though I'm not sure of the exact population - it may be quite big compared to may small American towns) town in the South of China located near the more-popular city Guilin. It's known for beautiful scenery: rice paddies, rivers, and most notably, large limestone karsks. From what I hear, this type of scenery exists only in two places in the world: here and in Thailand. I won't go through too much description because I will be posting photos (and hopefully videos) as soon as I return to Beijing. I'll be certain to post again to let you know when that happens.

Anyways, since the scenery is so beautiful, the majority of the activities here in Yangshuo are located outdoors. Dan, Elliott and I have been doing quite a bit of walking through the town, both on the main tourist street, XiJie (or West street), but also quite a bit in the less touristed areas. In addition, we've spent two days biking through the rice paddies surrounded by limestone karsks in the country side, and Dan and Elliott took a little kayak trip down the Li River yesterday (as I recovered from a "rough night").

We've also met some very nice people here. The rough night was instigated by an Italian fellow named Mauro who was quite worried about, "De kids with too much moneys." However, even though Elliott and I might have fit into that category (we didn't test the waters), we had a wonderful time laughing and joking with him and his wife, Marta, in a strange (and somewhat slurred, later in the evening) mixture of Italian, English and Spanish.

Today at lunch we also met a very nice French couple (though we didn't catch their names). Turned out, however, that the husband had done quite a bit of business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin early in his career and absolutely loved the people with whom he worked during that time. Hence, he was immediately very warm with the three Wisconsinites that happened to be traveling through China at the same time that he was. I personally found his life pretty fascinating: grew up in France and educated as an engineer; decided to take a job in sales instead of engineering; moved to the USA to work; moved to South Korea to work; worked some other places for different companies; now manages three auto parts plants in south and east Asia. Gotta love traveling . . .

Not much else to say at this point. We take off for Shanghai tomorrow to visit my now ex-boss, Alex. Should be a fast-paced, whirlwind tour of Shanghai for Dan and Elliott. I'll just be along for the ride.

More posts to come as more interesting things happen and pictures become available.