Despite knowing we were coming at completely the wrong time of year for the good views of the Li River that we came here for we're really glad we came anyway!

We had a rather stressful couple of hours in Shenzhen train station (the border town with Hong Kong). Firstly, despite having now been officially part of China for over ten years the border was one of the most strict we have been through so far. Graham got searched, had our food for the train confiscated and we were left with some educational literature about the error of our ways! Secondly, we spent ages trying to find some Chinese money (Lloyds, quite helpfully, put a fraud block on both our cards and, as it was the weekend, the banks were closed!). These two combined didn't put Graham in the best of moods (Gemma thought it prudent to stay and look after the bags!), so when he was successful in finding money he also came back with some beer for the journey. We arrived in Guilin, at 6.45am, having somehow sent home our guidebook and couldn't remember the name of the hostel, or where it was. Quite clever we thought!

Guilin was cold, misty and damp - very British! But we've had a good time, the highlight will probably be the day that will go down in history as "The day of many modes of transport"! We set off by car (Mode No. 1) for our first destination - the Crown Caves. This was a highly surreal experience. We set off in a Slide Car (a cross between a roller coaster and a go kart and (Mode No.2!) for the caves, where we swiftly swapped to a boat on an underground river (Mode No.3) and a funny little noddy train (Mode No. 4)! The caves were cool! Vast and maze-like with lots of those stalagtites and stalagmites that we all learnt about at school (now who can remember which way round they are??!!!). The rather over the top lighting had a rather weird effect of making it feel like we were in a cross between Lord of the Rings, The Bat Cave and Fraggle Rock. The only thing missing were the doozers! We then (rather bizarrely for a cave!) caught (Mode No. 5) a lift out of the cave.

We then moved onto the real reason for our outing to the Li River. We hopped onto a barge (Mode No. 6) and had a very peaceful hour sat on the front admiring the (rather misty) scenery and did not see another tourist! It was lovely. We even spotted a real cormorant fisherman (and not a fake one for tour groups), which we were quite pleased about. After the first hour we got a little taster of what it would be like to be here in the summer, when we came cross tens and tens of big tour boats crawling in a line along the only stretch of river still deep enough for them. It was horrible! And we decided that as disappointed as we were at the peaks being shrouded in mist, if was infinitely preferable to being stuck on one of those queues! After we negotiated the rather hazardous traffic in our little boat, we swapped to an even smaller boat (or more accurately, raft!) for another peaceful cruise down the river (Mode No. 7). It was owned by a little old couple and we dropped the wife off on the way to chop wood . . . we weren't quite sure about the fairness of that!

When the river dried up completely we swapped to a motorbike taxi (Mode No. 8) for a very bumpy but beautiful rde through the countyside around the Li River and back to our car and onto Yangshuo, where we spent the night. Yangshuo is a small little town with a big backpacker area. It was nice and relaxing for a while, but we were glad we weren't staying there longer - we might have ended up with tie-dyed clothing and dreadlocks - it was obviously the done thing! The next day after a rather vicious and perhaps undeserved massage/beating/torture we caught the bus (and Mode No. 9!) back to Guilin, ready to catch the overnight train to Vietnam. We're due to arrive at the border at 3am, so we're not quite sure how that works!

We're excited about moving onto a new country, but sad to leave China. At times it is a complete beaurocratic nightmare, but we're so glad we came as we've seen and done some fantastic things and got some brilliant memories.