There are no foreigner or Chinese only boats anymore but then again I didn't have that issue the first time I went in 2004. You can still rent the private speedboats.
The Li river is still pretty nice but the area has been rocked by storms recently. Tens of thousands of people displaced and hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in damages and so from run off and just the churning up of silt, the river right now looks worse than it actually is.
The area is far more commercialized than 8 years ago and although it was a holiday, I was still surprised at the number of people "relaxing themselves". West street in Yangshuo was pretty much a write off because of the amount of people.
