Hello everyone,

We're now in Guilin. The flight here only took 2 hours. Really quick which was good and had dinner as well. Guilin is a small'ish town. Only takes about 30mins to walk round. It’s nice with a main road full of big shops and on the other end there are some gorgeous little back streets, market style. We went to 'Reed Flute Cave'. It’s a huge cave with rooms and passage ways here there and everywhere. It has little walk ways and some massive rooms. The photographs we took don't do it justice. It was really amazing. The lighting was cool but a little tacky in some places. Also it goes from really hot and humid to very cold as you wander through the rooms. Today was a good day!

We went to the elephant park. There are no elephants here, it's just named this because of a rock formation that (if you look hard enough) just about resembles an elephant. It was very nice here with little walks and some cool scenery of huge peaks. There's a river that runs through the middle of it and it was nice to see a traditional Chinese man fishing on his wooden raft with cormorants (fishing birds). Today was also a good day!

Today was not so good a day as follows... We decided to go to the Seven Peak Park. It has the largest peak in Guilin and gave a nice 360 degree view of the town. It also had a Zoo. This was a bad idea. We had always wondered if we would see any animals in horrible conditions and for this reason had kept a small memory card free to record anything we saw and to then send off to Born Free. This was it and it hit us bloody hard! What a complete dump this was. We saw this beautiful Asian black bear in the smallest of cages with just a concrete floor. No grass or hay or soft bedding. In fact it had no bed at all. It was only 3 metres by 4 metres. Cold concrete walls and steel bars at the front. It just paced up and down from sheer boredom. We took a video clip of it and a couple of pictures. Next was a small monkey that had been dress from head to toe in this ridiculous costume. It was tied to a pole on a table so it couldn't stray off. Darren tried to be discrete as possible in taking the photos but the owner saw us and just tied up the monkey tighter so we could take a better photo. It could only move now about 2 inches in any direction. And the monkeys face said it all. It was heart breaking. The photos we took of the monkey will be sent off to 'Monkey World' in Dorset. Darren kept saying lets just get out of here as it was horrible but at the same time we knew that if we did our bit, hopefully good may come out of it. The last thing we saw (this was the worst) was a gorgeous Bengal tiger in a round cage (about 5metres in diameter) with stone flooring. Inside with the tiger was the owner with his large metal stick to keep him under control. There was a water bowl, empty of course. What made this whole setup so bad was you were aloud to have your photo taken with him for less than a couple of quid. We took lots of photos and then a load of Chinese tourists came up to the cage and one by one had their picture taken of him or her sitting on the tiger. The tiger hated it. Gemma could tell this by the fact its ears went back which means he knew he would get a wack from the stick if he didn't do as he was told. And it doesn’t take a vet nurse to realise that the noise's he was making weren't of joy. Darren publicly addressed them all by saying that this was sick and don't any of you realise what your doing is so wrong. As you could of guessed, none of them spoke a word of English. We left quickly as Darren had tears in his eyes from the noise this poor tiger was making and as soon as we were outside; Gemma just broke down in tears as well. We felt good though knowing the fact we'd taken lots of pictures and a video clip and will send it off to the appropriate organisations. We were down in the dumps for ages after that. It's amazing what some humans find as entertainment isn't it!

Anyway, you lot must now be seeing a pattern in all our "Chinese" journals. Only a few days left now if that makes sense. Hint, hint!!! We're off to Yangshuo tomorrow. So fingers crossed that after 4 weeks in this country we might find a part of it we really like. So speak to you all soon.

Lots of love Darren and Gemma xxx xxx