Monday on the Li River Cruise...

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip,
that started from this Chinese port,
aboard a broken-down ship.

The babies started getting cranky,
the ship board lunch was tossed,
if not for the courage of the once fearlful parents,
the adoption would be lost.

As Jan stated above, it was a long (five hours), hot, and tiring boat ride. The scenery was unbelievable, but it was hard to spend any time looking around because our babies were wide awake and looking all around, grabbing everything in sight. The food was sub-par, and probably to be expected considering the "kitchen" was hanging off the back of the boat. And if I am not mistaken, they were washing dishes in the river water. Imagine taking a New York hot-dog cart and tying it to the back of the boat - minus the hot dogs - those would be gourmet compared to what we ate. Nothing was marked, so you weren't really sure what anything was. And with all of use a little afraid to get sick trying to care for twins, mostly we ate rice, french fries and bananas. At least they had a choice of bathrooms here - one western and one squatty potty. This trip up the river would have been amazing during April when it's not so hot and without two new babies to care for! Oh well. So below are a couple of pictures from the trip.



The picture below was taken right after we got off the boat. Leaving the docking area, you enter a tourist trap where you are bombarded by street vendors selling everything from post cards to knock-off Polo's. The heat was sweltering with no breeze and we had to walk probably 4 blocks. We were not having fun and all sweating on one another yet again.


That evening, Jan ordered some noodles from room service and the girls loved thier noodles. The pictures below were taken while they ate. Looking at the pictures, I think they ended up wearing most of the noodles they were given. They sure had fun though. Sydney is on the left and Alex is on the right.




We'll try and make another post tonight or in the morning. We're about to leave for the airport. We're headed to Guangzhou and the last leg of our trip. More to come...