So, another few days gone by and we are now in Gulin, having arrived a couple of hours ago on the 12 hour sleep train from Guangzhou...Unfortunately a lovely chinese man snoring and snoorting heavily in his sleep the bunk below me meant that I got a grand total of about an hour's sleep last night though, so bear with me if this blog's a little bit clunky...

So, Hong Kong Disneyland, what can I say?!We had an awesome time, met the whole gang (all the princesses, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy AND Winnie the Pooh), went on classic rides such as It's a small world (which, despite everyone else in the world apparently loathing it, I actually love), the Mad Hatter's Teacups as well as an awesome Buzz Lightyear shoot 'em up ride, AND I even got to go on Space Mountain (AMAZING), it was all going so well until of course the rain hit... and it hit real hard!Of course neither of us had thought to bring a coat as we didn't think the ominous clouds over Lantau Island where the theme park is based would actually be filled with rain,duh!After quite a miserable time of it on the Autopia car ride, and a good half hour listening to the thunder and eating over priced ice cream at one of the fast food joints, we decided to cut our losses and headed back to Kowloon. It seems that every time we try to do something fun and not culturally related we get rained on, I think the big man upstairs is trying to tell us something!! Anyway, we grabbed some yummy noddly broth in a little restaurant near our hotel, and after much stressful and unsuccessful calling of guest houses in Macau to try and book accommodation for the Friday night so we could have one night living it up in the Las Vegas of Asia, we also made the decision to by-pass Macau and stay an additional night in the big smoke. Weirdly enough, in amongst the crappy tv movies on the only english movie channel on our tv, the film The Reader was on, so I settled in with the good but rather depressing holocaust film while Jade headed off for a late night skype chat with her family.

Next day, Thursday, we took advantage of the break in the humidity because of the previous day's thunderstorm and headed off to Lantau Island again on the metro to see the Big Buddha there, which I think is the world's largest bronze outdoor sitting Buddha or some such size related world record as that, hence the big Buddha knickname (it's called something else but can't quite recall it right now!). We got the Ngong Ping 360 cable car up the mountainous terrain to the Buddha, pretty impressive considering both of us aren't great with heights as the thought of being suspended by a cable in what is essentially a glass case over the sea is terrifying to me!We made it safely to the top though, and got to see some stunning views of Hong Kong island in the distance and the South China Sea ( I think?!), and just about made the 260 step climb to the top of the big guy, who was indeed very very big, and very impressive!There was a lot of low lying cloud, but we were still able to check out the view from the top, and catch our breath before climbing back down all those steps again.I'm defnitely a lot fitter than when I left home what with carrying all my wordly possessions on my back and the million miles we walk a day on average, but I'm sure all the steps here in China wll be the death of me! After finding some 'Macaunese' food at a nearby shoppng mall food court (I could of sworn my beef and fried noodle combo was more chinese than Macaunese!), we headed back to the visa office in wan chai on Hong Kong Island, where we picked up our precious little passes back into China, then we made the very sweaty uphill clmb to Hong Kong park as we had read in our books about the Admirality Tea Museum running tea making classes every Thursday and friday at 4 and 5pm, and wanted to join in the fun. We arried at the museum just before 5, only to discover that the book had got the days and the times wrong, in fact they only run classes on something like Tuesday and Wednesdays and only at 4pm for an hour. Suffice to say, I don't recommend lonely planet China to anyone, as this is I think the second or third time they've got information like this wrong AND they're snooty about all the things that we've done and really enjoyed, like the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which is a kitschy but cool classic!Anway, rant over... we just decided to chill out in the park for a little bit after that, watching the world go by and the coy n the fish pond. Afterwards, we headed to the nearby Soho area of the island for some food, and settled on a little mexican place where I chowed down on a yummy chicken burrito and a well earned beer after all the steps and slopes of the day! The place we ate at was so busy that we ended up perching on a little table by the window, which was actually really cool as we were facing right on to the mid levels escalator and the stairs down from the top so we were able to do lots of good people watching. Hong Kong is such a vibrant and multi-cultural place, it's really cool to see lots of different nationalities represented, and it's particularly apparent in Soho where you can eat foods ranging from Russian to Lebanese!

On our last day in Hong Kong, we got up early and grabbed a delcious and cheap breakfast at the McCafe (McDonald's in house version of starbucks, they're obviously trying to appeal to the yummy mummies who bring their screaming kids in for happy meals but wouldn't touch a big mac with a barge pole themselves!), booked our bus to Guangzhou then headed off on the metro to the nearby Flower and Bird markets at Prince Edward. The Flowers were just beautiful, loads of gorgeous lillies, roses, orchids and tulips as well as more exotic vareties. We saw some stunnng flower arrangements too, such a shame we couldn't buy any but life on the road means that flowers aren't such a practical choice for a gift to yourself!!The bird marke as cool too, although it did smell of, well, bird poo..loads of birds ranging from the teeny tiny to massive parrots and cockatoos, as well as live maggots and locust for sale for feedng to them, yeuck!! We had an interesting lunch at a place that was japanese for the most part, but also had japanese-italian fusion dishes too.. you wouldn't think that would work but jade's carbonara japanese style was definitely well received! just stuck to beef noodles in a spicy coconuty soup, it was really good. We caught our bus at half past four, and waved goodbye to Hong Kong. I really loved it, I think possible it's my favourite place in China that we've been to so far, though I do love Shanghai and Beijing too. I'd defnitely go back, especially once I've made my millions so I can hit the fabulous designer flagship stores and boutiques that line the streets.

We had a bit of a stressful experience when we were going through immigration on the Chinese bit of the border, as we just assumed that we would had to get off the bus and get our documents and passport checked as we'd done a few minutes before when we officially left HK, but in actual fact we were changing buses but no one had told us this in English as all the other passengers on the bus where chinese, so unbeknownst to us after we'd got off the bus and nto the building, our bags had been unloaded and we were supposed to take them with us and put them through the scanner, before loading them onto the new bus at the other end. When someone did come to tell us, we'd already had our chinese visas stamped, so we had to have one of the border people escort us the couple of metres to our bags and back to the gate again, arrghhh!!!At least the bus didn't leave without us, small mercies!!

We arrived in Guangzhou about half 8 on Friday evening, and we really didn't do much for the two days we were there until yesterday evening apart from a quick jaunt in the park and a go round the boating lake in a pedalo, as apart from some revolutionary sights (which we didn't really have the energy or the interest for), it's a pretty grim city very big and polluted. The one redeeming feature though, without a doubt is the food, as Guangzhou is probably better known as Canton, and the epicurean centre of cantonese food!!n particular, we had a delicious meal on Saturday probably the best chinese food we've ever had actually, in the very fancy Panx restaurant, which had shark fin soup going for the equivalent of about 88 quid, and some very interesting offal dishes... We haven't lost our senses or our money though, as we stuck to the more suitably priced dim sum menu, and or the equivalent of about 6 pounds each, we feasted on flavoursome chicken sprng rolls, shrimp dumplings, and-my favourite-steamed pork buns, which is bascally barbequed pork in a kind of chutney all wrapped up in sweet, fluffy bread. They sound disgusting but are really delicious, I would definitely recommend them!It was quite funny when we went to the restaurant though, as we got caught in another torrential downpour, and although this time we did have our pac-a-macs (well, I had my massive and obviously extremely fashionable floral poncho), we still got pretty much soaked to the skin, and so when we got to the restaurant we walked in lookng like little drowned rats and quietly taking our seats, while the waitresses looked on bemused and pretty much the entire restaurant turned, stared and (some people) laughed at us...oh dear!!

Anyway, as I said, we've just arrived in Guilin now, and after a pretty restless night's journey I'm off to get a shower to blow the cobwebs away. More soon.

lots of love from Guilin xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx