Hanging like a monkeys nuts. We decided to have an easy day after our night out. So we just chilled at the riverside and took it easy getting ready to leave the next day. Not that I would ever be ready to leave. I broached the subject with Steve of blowing off the pandas (not literally - I love pandas as much as the next guy but not that much) and staying in Yangshuo. But he didn't want to and I suppose he was right. The pandas were the whole reason we were still...

We set out on our scooters. I love riding scooters it's so much easier than a bicycle but you still get to see smell and hear everything that you wouldn't in a car. There were two to choose from one was electric and slightly newer, the other was petrol with warn breaks. I decided to take the petrol one (even though it was bright pink and i looked a little like lady Penelope on it) as Steve had never ridden one before and I thought he would find the electric one e...

The rice fields flashed pass as I clung to the back of Sam's scooter. Sam chatted non stop all the way until we reached the Yulong River for our early morning swim. It was now part and parcel of our day in Yangshuo and it wouldn't have been right to start the day without it. It was also my favourite part. After swimming for over an hour we went back to Sam's for breakfast that his mum had prepared. This time it was fried egg and cakes. We spent the morning just c...

Before we set off we had to pick some climbing shoes but we could only find one pair big enough, this seems to happen a lot as most Chinese people have small feet. I mentioned this to Sam and he said English people have bigger everything, i wasn't sure if it was a compliment or an insult but decided on the former and swaggered out to the scooters. We jumped on the back and headed for the rocks. We stopped along the way to buy some steam dumplings for breakfast wh...

We eventually crawled out of our bed around lunchtime. We grabbed a couple of Sam's bikes and set off on a bike ride. After just 10 minutes we were in the country riding parallel with the river along dirt tracks. The kasts and rice fields zipped pass. It was like cycling back in time, people worked the fields with ox's and carried buckets of water they collected from the local pump, their homes were single story with no real doors or windows and had mud floors. W...