Following a Melody.

It's actually been such an astonishing day, I'm not even sure where to start. We met Melody yesterday. Melody is a 40-something Chinese woman who works as some sort of a freelance travel facilitator. She approached me as I was leaving my hotel: "I can do laundry for you. Much cheaper than your hotel. And if you want to go on tour or rent a bike, I can help you." As it so happened, we were in need of both laundry and tour services, so I negotiated a price for both. I gathered up our dirty clothes and delivered them to her; she promised 27 hour turnaround. Not bad, when you consider that her price is a quarter of that at my hotel. After a decent breakfast at MC Blues, the place I've been hitting in the morning and evening to get connected to the internet, Kori and the boys returned to the hotel to prepare the backpacks for a day on the road, and I hit the local branch of the Bank of China to exchange dollars for yuan. After a long and frustrating wait, I was able to make the transaction. I returned to our room to fetch Kori and the boys, and we headed out to meet Melody. Melody had promised us a tour of the countryside. I didn't know that we would be following Melody on bicycles. Tandem bicycles. I also didn't know that the tour would take us nearly two bone-rattling, bun-busting hours away from the city to Melody's small farming village. If I had known in advance, I probably would have declined. I'm so glad I didn't; today was one of our best days yet in China. Just a couple of miles outside of town, the scenery is breathtaking. All of those mountains that looked so fantastic on the boat? They're even fantasticker up close. On the boat, you can't see the rice paddies and villages and dirt roads. You can't see the ducks and chickens and dogs and water buffalo. On a bike, you can see, smell and touch it all.  After an hour or so of cycling (well, Kori and I cycled, the boys sat behind us and rode), the terrain got pretty rough, enough so that we had to walk beside the bikes about a quarter of the time. But the scenery just got better and better. Unfortunately, I didn't take as many pictures as i would have liked -- the cycling was exhausting, and dismounting and stopping our caravan was inconvenient. We stopped along the way and took an hour long tour of a stalactite filled cavern. It was similar to Ohio Caverns, but less-well maintained (people were allowed to touch the stalactites and stalagmites; this ruins them) and more garishly lit. But it was great fun. We grabbed a bit of a snack and hit the road again. After what seemed like a very long time, we reached a tiny village nestled in a plain between a couple of mountains. The road to Melody's simple, hand-made, brick and stucco house was so steep and so muddy, we had to park the bikes and walk the last few hundred yards. When we arrived at the house, Melody apologized, "It's a very simple, poor house. We do not have a nice or new house." We assured her it was lovely, and it honestly was. Spartan, but beautiful. Melody's husband, who stays at home and tends the pomelo, peanut and rice crops while Melody serves tourists, had cooked a wonderful meal. I'm serious -- the farmers in China know how to cook. Some of our best meals in this country have been prefaced with "I'm sorry, this is just simple, farmer food. I hope it is okay for you." We had a stir-fry of beef, onions, eggplant and water chestnuts, another beef dish with garlic and vegetables, a pork and tofu platter and little egg dumplings stuffed with pork. It was all quite nice. After lunch, we rode our bikes another half hour or so to a tributary of the Li River. We rented two small bamboo rafts, donned life vests, loaded our bikes and took our seats. We spent the next hour and a half enjoying a leisurely cruise down the river. We disembarked about a half hour from town, and rode our bikes the rest of the way back. Needless to say, we're tired. We're also sunburned -- Yangshuo has gotten quite hot over the last couple of days. Over-exertion and overheating aside, we had a thrilling day. Tomorrow, we're just going to chill. We might not even leave the hotel. We'll see...