We took a boat ride down the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo. Very touristy (there was a convoy of boats) but the scenery was well worth it. Yangshuo is only a small place but is crammed full of market stalls - all waiting for the boats from Guilin to arrive. You wonder how they mange to survive as they all sell the same crap! We hired some bikes and headed for the countryside. Easily the best so far on our travels. We also took a bamboo raft down the Yu Long...

Only a short stay here. Fair play to the Chinese for developing a whole tourist industry out of a very suspect looking rock formation - an elephant drinking water. Judge for yourselves from the pictures! We also took a trip to the rice terraces at Longsheng. Feeling that we were now experienced travellers we decided to make our own way there. By bus. First of all it took over an hour for the bus to leave the city as it drove around picking up passengers until...

Pandas!!! Yet another early start to watch them have breakfast. Apparently once they've eaten they spend the rest of the day asleep. Sounds fantastic to me. We weren't disappointed. They even had a creche facility with a number of baby pandas. The only criticism is the Research Centre is basically a glorified zoo. If my memory serves me correctly they haven't actually released any pandas into the wild yet. We also wandered around the People's Park in the ...

Before the rain and smog set in we visited the Terracotta Warriors, cycled around the city wall and climbed up Hua Shan. We also shared a dorm room with a New Zealand soapstar. Now that doesn't happen in Horsham.

Beijing is quite simply massive - walking anywhere takes forever! Shame the taxi drivers are reluctant to pick up tourists. Even when they do stop you often have to give them directions - that includes the major tourist attractions. Huge parts of the city resemble a building site as work for the 2008 Olympic Games is in full swing. We did mange to get a glimpse of the stadium which is very impressive and resembles a 'birds nest'. We visited the usual sight...