September 4, 2025
Our first activity of the day was a tour of the Yangshuo market with Michael. While at the market, Ollie ran over to see cats and dogs hanging at one of the stands. I watched as he ran over to tell us and he was so startled he nearly got taken out by two different mopeds. We had a talk about not saying “gross” or “yucky” to different foods before we went to the market so Ollie was just quietly stunned. Len was most surprised that they sold live pigeons at the market, “how do people eat pigeons???” The kids also loved to see the turtles and frogs until they learned they were for food. Ollie asked, “do you eat the frog legs like in France?” and Michael let him know they typically eat the whole animal save for the head. We bought some big red figs before we left and the concept of “keeping the change” didn’t translate and instead the woman kept adding figs to our order until they weighed exactly 20 yuan worth (less than 3 USD). We also got the kids mini gummy hamburger skewers for a snack.
Next we drove up the river to get on bikes for a waterside ride. We were happy to see that Len had been given a tandem bike attached to the back of Kyle’s versus a kiddie seat mounted on the back. Len is approaching 60 lbs and balancing on a non E-assist bike in this heat would be brutal. The bike for Ollie looked a little small but he was keen to give solo riding a chance. He first had to cross a small road to get to the bike path and he was so nervous to cut out in front of any car, even if they were like 100ft away. I helped him cross the street, we took a bridge picture and we were on our way (we thought). Ollie had a hard time keeping his eyes on the road instead of his feet and tumbled after his first turn. He was slightly shaken but wanted to keep going. After 15 more seconds of pedaling he almost flipped over the front of his handlebars and fell over. He decided he didn’t want to keep going but thankfully Michael had a backup plan— he brought the bikes back and retuned on a moped so Ollie could hop on the back. Ollie and Len took turns swapping between the tandem bike and the back of the moped which turned out being an ideal setup. Ollie was able to get the ride narration directly from Michael on the moped and he would relay select tidbits back to me, “MOM! SWEET POTATOES!”, “MOM! These are peanuts!”, “BANANAS!!!!”
We rode up the river for 20 minutes then turned into a small village to take a break in a cave with some locals. The villagers were cooling off in the cave and had saved us spots to sit and even offered us their pipe. We declined the pipe but took them up on a brief cave hang. They told us that if we kept climbing into the narrow cave we would find some small lakes to further cool off but going any deeper felt insane. Len took to showing off his running jumps and everyone seemed to enjoy his energy.
After the bike ride, Michael applied some Chinese medicinal powder to Ollie’s scrapes and we hydrated with watermelon juice, passion fruit juice and lemonade.
Then we drove just a few minutes down the road to board bamboo rafts for a ride down the river. The ride was mostly peaceful save for 3 mini drops which the kids referred to as waterfalls. When the tip of the raft fell into the water we were surprised how wet we got and the boys loved the little bit of excitement.
After a quick lunch back at our hotel, we were again picked up and taken to our next activity. En route to the cooking class, the boys were antsy and bickering constantly in the backseat.
Ollie: You scratched me first!
Lenny: You scratched me second!
Ollie: You scratched me third!
Lenny: You scratched me fourth!
The cooking class was held 30 minutes away at Cloud 9 Cooking School. One other group took the class with us– a British family with two grown children. We saw the hot plates, woks and cleavers all lined up when we walked in and I thought there was no way the kids would be able to survive the whole class. We were pleasantly surprised they both lasted the entire 3 hour class!
Len teamed up with Kyle to complete just one recipe between the two of them but Oliver insisted he wanted to work entirely on his own. Oliver was first given a full size/weight cleaver and he told me to stand back while he did all the chopping solo. I ensured him that there was no way I was going to let that happen as he had only ever held a plastic practice knife at home. The instructor soon brought him a smaller/lighter cleaver but it was just as sharp which pleased him. During all of the chopping parts, he would first watch me and then I would help him through his chopping steps. There were only a few close calls where he almost got one of my fingers.
The first recipe we prepared was pork and chive dumplings, Oliver’s favorite Chinese food. We used store bought wrappers but prepared the filling and wrapped them ourselves. Oliver was keen to do all of the wrapping entirely himself even when the intructor walked by to help him. Len was happy to tag team with Kyle and took his duty of wetting the wrapper with his finger seriously. After making the dumplings Len says unprompted to Kyle, “That sure was fun, Daddy!”
The next portion of the class was a lot of chopping produce to prepare to cook the rest of the dishes. Oliver’s confidence with the cleaver continued to increase with his skill lagging behind but he knew his limits well enough to accept my help. The last section of the class was cooking the dishes in the high heat wok. Again, Oliver refused help when he absolutely needed it. Standing close to the open fire and hot woks we were all heating up and bickering with Oliver about not touching the hot wok almost sent me over the edge. At one point, instead of dumping raw chicken from the bowl into the wok he threw the entire metal bowl into the very hot wok. We all recovered and finished the cooking portion but were all drenched in sweat by the end. Oliver probably ate 15 dumplings for dinner while meticulously grading each team’s wrapping skills. He gave me an A (“Not quite A+ work mom but close”) and Kyle and Len a B+. While Len was proud to point to all the dishes he contributed to making, he stuck to eating mostly rice noodles.
