Wednesday we woke early to check out and meet our group at 7:00, it was very daunting at first, the group is very big, 21 of us in total. We set off straight away, following the group leader Evan, to catch the tram up to Victoria Peak for our briefing, we all had to introduce ourselves, there's 2 Germans, 2 Kiwis, 4 Aussies and 12 British including ourselves. There is no chance we are going to remember everyone's names!!! Everyone seems really cool and a lot of people are on/doing long trips like us but everyone is always amazed when we tell them we hiked Kilimanjaro and got engaged at the top! It started raining so we didn't get much of a view at the top of Victoria Peak, we went back down on the tram and back to the hostel to grab our big bags and head to the Guangzhou border. The Chinese border was pretty easy, the staring has started again with kids laughing at us and adults taking photos of us like we are aliens. When we got into China we went to the train station for our train to Guilin, the train station was like a airport, it was huge with separate gates for each train and you have designated check-in times to catch your train. We said goodbye to Evan and met our new team leader Sally. The train was like a Airplane, and is classed as a 'bullet train' and my god did it travel fast, it got up to 310km/h!! The train only took 3 hours, then we had to catch a 2 hour bus to our hostel in Yangshuo, we are in a 4 bed room with another couple from New Zealand, Blake and Victoria. By now it was 21:00 and we were absolutely starving so we headed out for a group dinner, it was buffet style so we paid about £3.40 each and helped ourselves to different dishes laid on the table. After dinner we looked at the activities list and picked what we wanted to do here in Yangshou, by time we finished that and got back to the hostel it was midnight. Ben and some others hit the roof bar to play beer pong whilst Laura and others hit bed!

Thursday, Ben joined the group at 8:30 for breakfast then went rock climbing at 9:00, Laura had a lie in until 10:30. The rock climbing was really fun, we had to climb up 2 rock faces reaching 18 & 30 metres. We all met back up for lunch at 12:30 then headed out for a bike ride to the river at 14:00, we were a little worried about riding bikes after we were told yesterday that 600 people die a day in China by getting knocked over, we then calculated that 600 people in China is 0.0000002% of the Chinese population! The bike ride was quiet funny as we were travelling in mass and all ringing our bells making a racket, loads of locals wanted to take photo of the white people on bikes! At the river we climbed aboard a very wobbly bamboo raft with a bench for 2 just balancing in the middle and all took a trip down the river, the scenery was beautiful similar to Ninh Binh and Halong Bay with lots or rock karsts, got rather interesting when we reached little waterfalls and the raft just slides down them luckily only getting our feet wet. When we got to the end of the bamboo ride we hopped back on our backs and cycled back to town. At 19:00 we did another group dinner of different dishes being passed round, it's actually a really great way of trying lots of different foods. At 21:00 we walked down to the river and got on a boat which took us out to watch a little old man train his Cormaront birds to fish, like we saw in the HSBC advert, the birds are amazing, they dive under water and stay for quiet a while then pop back up with a fish. After watching we got to hold a bird, the are actually a lot bigger up close and are really heavy to hold out on your arm, they have the longest pointy beaks and bright blue eyes. Cormaront fishing is old traditional fishing which has taken place in Japan and China since about 960 AD. After, we bought some drinks and sat in the common room drinking before hitting the roof top bar to play some flip cup and beer pong.

Friday, we had a nice very long lie in, headed out for some food and a walked around town at 12:30. At 15:30 we met up with Becky and Andy to do a Chinese Cooking Class, we walked to the cooking studio to meet another couple and choose what we were going to cook, Beef with Mint and Chili, Stir Fried Eggplant and Pork Dumplings. After, we walked to the food market to get ingredients, it was similar to a lot of food markets we've been to with all the same vegetables however the meat section was obviously very different, we saw your standard beef, pork and chicken, but the chicken still with their heads on, there was pigs ears, snout and tounge, then in cages there were live chicken, duck, pigeon, geese and rabbit, there were fish, snails, frogs and snakes then in the distance there was the dog and cat isle, we decided we didn't want to go closer as we could already see from where we were and could also hear dogs barking so didn't want to see any stuck in cages or being killed. When we got back to the cooking studio we got stuck in chopping all our ingredients and throwing them in our big woks, it was funny making the Pork Dumplings as whenever we tried to fold over the casing the ingredients seamed to burst out the other side! Eventually everything was cooked and we sat all together to eat, the cooking lady also gave us rice and made a really nice Chinese cucumber salad. After, we walked back to the hostel and bumped into the rest of the group, we all walked around town and sat around the common room chatting then at 21:00 we went to a local Chinese Remedy Treatment Centre, some people got nice relaxing massages then others, including us, decided to try the Hot Cupping. We led on beds, the therapist heated up bamboo cups then stuck them to our backs, as the air in the cups begins to cool and contract it sucks the impurities and toxins out of the skin, we each had about 15 - 25 cups on our backs, the sensation of your skin being sucked into these cups was very strange, I didn't really hurt but was uncomfortable. As soon as the cups were realised we were all comparing big round purple bruises on our backs, the darker the colour the more toxins you had. Our backs were quiet tender by time we got into bed!

Saturday we had a lie in, went for breakfast and a walk around town, at 14:00 we all took a trip to Sallys village, we caught the local bus to the nearest town, Xingping Fishing Village, where the photo for the 20RMB note was taken. We walked around another food market which was similar to the one we went to yesterday, the rest of the group got to see the meats section. Sallys brother picked us up from town and drove us out to their remote village where we went for a walk from her Uncles house along the countryside to her Mothers house. Sally showed us a a water supply that's been supplying water to the village for ages but to the houses through pipes only since 2012, at her Mothers house she explained a lot to us about tradition in China, like political views, marriage age, birthing age, divorse opinions, gay opinions etc. It was interesting to view the difference between the UK and China and we are continuously reminded how lucky we have it in the UK, we also got our first insight into how the Chinese government continue Propaganda and hide truths from its people. We ate dinner at Sallys Uncles house and we're shown up by her 7 year old nieces chop stick skills. We were dropped back to Yangshou city and packed our bags ready for tomorrow as we leave for Chengdu.

Sunday we had a lie in, then had some breakfast, we checked out at 9:00 and got a bus to the train station, at 13:00 we said our goodbyes to Sally and boarded our train to Chengdu.