Hi all glad to hear there is finaly some good weather back at home bout time, hope you all well.

We got picked up for our Yangtze River Cruise about sevenish in the morning and taken to our coach which we travelled on to Chongquing for about four hours was not a bad trip as the coach was quite empty although we were then only people that were not chinese so everyone was staring at us. When we arrived we were told that the boat went from Wangzou which was another four hour bus journey we were first there so had a couple of hours walk round the town Joe bought some meat (well it looked a bit like meat) from some guys in the town.

When we arrived back to collect our bags and to get the bus we discovered that the camera had gone we went everywhere kooking for it but noone spoke Chinese so we were stuffed Joe then remembered he had left it on the wall ouutside the toilets but it was obvioulsy not there when we returned! Luckily we had taken a spare digital one and most of the photos had been uploaded the night before so all was not lost (we dont seem to have much luck with cameras)

The bus journey was a strange one again the only non chinese and we think every single person knew each other they were all fascinated with us. The lad in front ended up sharing his vodka with joe making him drink it neat and a huge bag of duck wings (I declined they are just bone) Joe knawed on them for a bit and then the guy turned and gave us what we can only describe as chicken feet with fat on vaccum packed and said " eat very good" could not even look at them we hid them in our bag, they asked the tour guide to ask us if they could buy us a drink on the boat.

The boat was huge not great to look at bit tatty the cabins were small and we were second class so ended up sharing with two older chinese guys who could not speak english we went up on deck had a bottle of wine (our first one yet ) and we set sail, we went straight through the first gorge which was huge. After a couple of hours we stopped at a temple and we were all off to look around it.

Woke in the morning to beautiful scenery and sunshine everyone had booked onto a small boat trip except me and joe so we chilled for the day had the boat to ourselves was great. That night we ended up meeting the guys and their families who were on the bus and they insisted on buying beers for us all night and we had our photos taken by all of them they even swapped tops with Joe and were fighting over who got joes tracksuit top it was very strange. We played cards till midnight then retired the two chinese guys were fast asleep with the light on just in their pants me and joe could not stop laughing.

Next day we awoke to beautiful scenery then set off for the final bit we chatted to some guys from Holland and a girl from Germany and we got off the boat to look at the dam which was built not long ago to generate electricty to millions of homes it was boring but very fascinating. We then had to take a coach to Wuhan where we had a hostel booked for the night it was a four hour bus journey on the way the guys from Holland said they had travelled all over the world and the best place they had been was a samll town called Yangshauo just past Guilin and that if we had time we should go there.

Arrived at the hostel and ummed and arrghed whether to go to Guilin as we had been planning on heading straight for Hong Kong and decided to sleep on it and in the mornin we went to the ticket office and booked a twelve hour sleeper train to Guilin.

We caught the train about six ish and was sharing with a young chinese girl who we think was a bit scared of us. Great train journey again and arrived early in the morning the young girl showed us where to go and we got straight on the bus to take us to Yangshauo the drive was amazing straight through the mountains knew we had not made a mistake to come here booked extra nights as soon as we arrived at the hostel which was fab.