:: zone3 ::

Wednesday was to be a day of buses and boats to get to the boarder though, starting with a small people ferry to get from Cat Ba island back to the northern Vietnam mainland. Then six hours of bus to get to the boarder crossing.

The crossing itself would have been I think the quickest land broader crossing I think I've done. 
Although the downside of crossing a boarder when it's quiet is the customs staff don't have a lot to do. The bored Chinese Customs staff (with a suitably military stylised uniform) decided to fill in their time with going right through both of my bags. On the plus, they then helped to pack them again, guess they really didn't have much to do...

From the boarder, at least only another hour until the guest house at Butterfly Valley, Ning Ming.

Butterfly Valley made for a quite little farming village of about 20 families. Breakfast on Thursday at the guest house was a simple noodle dish, every now and again in the open courtyard a chicken or two would wander through.
After breakfast had a walking tour of the little village. It is a largely self suffint village, growing their own crops. They do grow sugar cane (mostly), sugar cane and peanuts as a trade crops for some income.
 
The afternoon was a short boat ride 25km up river to see the Huashan paintings. A 2400 year old mural 200m wide and 50m high painted onto a sear cliff face 260m high. At the time, the mural was going you restoration with scaffolding covering half of it. An impressive cliff to have painted such a large mural on.

Another long day of buses today with six hours of buses to get to Liuzhou. Having an iPad along the way comes in handy for drafting this post as the scenery passes by during the second half of the bus ride. As we stopped for a quick break with around an hour or so to go on the bus the tour leader, Jing, asked about was I was writing and was disappoint to find find out she hadn't be mentioned yet in my trip writings.