Another overnight train and we arrived in Yangshuo, the most beautiful place we have been to in China. The town is small and atmospheric and surrounded by limestone karsts. On the first day Mark chilled out and Kim did Tai Chi and painting classes and found out that painting a simple picture of bamboo is really, really hard! Day two dawned and we donned conical bamboo hats and took to our bikes for a cycling tour of the countryside. The scenery was stunning alt...

Yichang, our home for one night after finishing our stunning Yangzi cruise, didn't seem to have much going for it at all...apart from we were staying in the Pinghu Hotel (sadly no statues of Pingu in the lobby!). We spent the afternoon in McDonalds ( I know - sad!) and catching up with emails and then headed off for dinner. Robin ate a roosters head complete with crest while those with more normal tastes dined on catfish and prawns. We all moaned about the extort...

Our boat on the Yangzi River was named the M.S. Fortune.... or Msfortune as someone cheerfully pointed out - good name for a boat 'Misfortune'!!! The boat was surprisingly nice with all meals included, nice cabins and a bar! Our first night before setting sail we headed off for hotpot though this time it was very spicy and as we were sitting at the 'adventurous' table our dipping ingredients included cows stomach, congealed chicken blood, sheep intestines and co...

Big Buddha! No not a curse but the object of our visit after leaving the Giant Pandas. In fact we were vistiting the largest outside seated Buddha in the World...are you impressed? You should be! It was actually very impressive - we went on a boat trip to see it from the river first (though as we all got on the wrong boat we nearly didn't go anywhere!) and then climbed up a rather a lot of steps to see it from the top. Mark bravely walked down hundreds of steps...

Another overnight train - this one for 18 hours - was passed playing a card game called ' Backpacker' (apt!) Chengdu is a lovely little town, much nicer than Xi'an, with ornate Chinese buildings, a friendly atmosphere and best of all NO SMOG! Our first activity in Chengdu was to take a Chinese cooking lesson cooking spicy Sichuan food. Mark was a little reluctant but secretly quite liked his apron and enjoyed cooking his steamed spicy eggplant and Gung Po Chic...