Hi everyone, at last i've found a computer thats fast enough to use this site, unfortunately there isn't a usb port to plug the camera in so there wont be any photos, will upload them as soon as we can. Well Beijing was excellent especially the great wall and the peking crispy duck (mmmmm brains..!) We had a cool new years eve at the hostel, with strange food, plenty of drink and a few fireworks, we also met some nice people from england, who by chance we bumped into at the next hostel, think like us they just picked the top rated one from hostelworld.com and even though the weather was a tad cold, to say the least, it was a great place to start. We left the capital for Xi'an about a week and a half ago i think, stayed here for 4 nights, a fairly small walled city and again very cold, we went to see the terracotta warriors, biked 13 kms around the wall and lindsey got food poisoning from some pumkin soup! That's about all there is to say about the place really, oh we did have a really good room at the hostel though, which you'll see in the pics (the bed was massive..!). So we then caught a plane south (which we nearly missed due to a crap taxi driver) to another city called Guilin. Hostel was right on the riverside and the room was ok, the really nice staff made the place, we didn't get up to much here either, walked around the shops, up a couple of very high peeks and we had Lindsey's first proper meal since being ill (pizza hut..!) this was more of a stop over before the next place, but we did go on a rather strange, all chinese tour into a massive cave system (reed flute caves) the rocks inside had wierd names like "turtle runs away from magic mirror" and "lion roars goodbye to visitors", personally i think whoever named them all was on the wacky backy, because we couldn't see anything but rocks, but it was fun though. After 3 nights here we took a slow boat down the Li River to our next destination and as you can see from the picture the scenery was absolutely stunning. 5 hours later we arrived at a sleepy little town called Yangshuo, it was nice to be in a small town and not another city. We were expecting good weather, but unfortunately it was a bit drizzly, but definately warmer which was a relief. We decided early on that we would use Yangshuo as a bit of a chill out zone, so the first afternoon we sat in a nice little wine bar/cafe and pollished off long awaited bottle of red, bought a couple of dodgy dvd's and watched them in our room. The next morning it was drizzly again, we had breakfast in an american owned cafe and the owner said the weather was set to improve the next day, so again we chilled out. Today we hired two bicycles (not a tandem like in Xi'an) and biked out of town along the river (the guide book said this route was like a dream, and it was) the scenery was again breath taking as we rode through little old villages amongst the karst landscape. Half way along we decided to have lunch then climbed a massive hill called "moon hill", exhausting but well worth the effort. The next day we hired an electric moped and bezzed out of town again, to a little "minority" village called shangri-la. Had a nice day then came back into town and soaked up the first real sun with a few cold ones, while we waited for our long overnight bus south. Well this morning we arrived in Macau after a very long and uncomfortable 11 hour bus journey, they call it a sleeper bus, but i think the only chance you would have of sleeping was if the bus was stationary, as the route must have been the bumpyest road in all of China. But anyway we arrived and so far Macao seems pretty cool (a bit like Las Vegas, but nowhere near as grand. We have two nights here then catch the ferry over to Hong Kong for the last four nights we have in this amazing country. So glad we came here, even with a few ups and downs, its been a really great experience, i would recomend coming here to anyone. Sorry to waffle on a bit, will try to update more frequently in future so your bum doesn't go to sleep while reading it..!

So until the next one, seeya.

love Ian and Lins.