Hello all!!

A quick boring bit first of all: After weeks of frustration, hitting of computers and general stress that I'm going to lose my camera without having uploaded my photos (!!!), I've abandoned STA's incredibly crappy and slow photo uploading tool and joined www.flickr.com which allows me to upload and organise all my photos much easier. It's a bit annoying if you want to have a look at what I've been up to to have to go onto a separate website, but it's a lot less hassle for me. My user name is lucylu223 so if you search you should be able to access my photos easily. Enjoy!!

We are currently in the very touristy, yet still very picturesque town of Yangshou which is about 40km down the Li River from Guilin. With a population of only 300,000 people, it's positively provincial compared to everywhere else we've been!!!We've had a great few days (hence the lack of blogging as the relaxing feel of the town means we've been spending lots of time chilling and very little time doing the practical things we probably should be doing!!), so I'll start from the top...

After we'd recovered from the overnighter from Guangzhou, got ourselves a very weird buffet breakfast at a nearby restaurant (including corn on the cob, which I ate, and broccoli which I didn't!) and settled into our hostel in Guilin on Wednesday morning, we set off to do a bit of sightseeing, hitting up the Sun and Moon Pagodas first (these are the two big lit up buildings you can see in the generic photo above that I didn't actually take!). They were just a short walk away from the hostel, and situated in the middle of a pretty little lake, though surrounded by lots of pretty ugly looking office buildings too so the view of them wasn't as great as it could have been. Apparently the sun pagoda (the golden one in the pic of course) is the largest bronze pagoda in the world, and the only pagoda in the world to have a lift inside it- after we took the underwater tunnel from the Moon to the Sun Pagoda, we went up the lift to check out the view, though we were a bit annoyed as they wouldn't let us up to the very top unless we bowed to a big gold statue of Buddha, which neither of us were prepared to do!! Fair enough I guess, but we did shell out the entry price to get in (I think it was about the equivalent of 4 pounds), so it was a bit unfair not to let us see the best of the views. Anyway, afterwards we went for a dander by the river, and walked to the nearby Elephant Trunk Hill, which is as it sounds- a massive, tree-covered hill which resembles an elephant, trunk and all!There were so many chinese people milling about and paying for professional photos in 'traditional' outfits by the river side (this seems to be a popular photo op at all the major touristy places we've been to, and even in some regular old parks too!) that we decided not to walk by the river side too much and just to make the climb up to the top of the hill. Many sweaty minutes later, the hill was feeling more like a mountain, and my feet were in a bad way as my plan to wear flip flops to give my feet a break from breaking in the new sandals I'd bought in HK backfired as my poor footsies were being rubbed something shocking!!We made it to the top though, and got a great view of the city. Guilin is an interesting place, as it is surrounded by loads of weird (yet beautiful) limestone peaks, and some of them (like Elephant trunk Hill) are even in the centre of the town, nearly touching office blocks and residential areas! Interesting, but a bit sad too that the city has overtaken the scenery in a way.

We did a bit more walking, as we wanted to go to another one of the hills called Solitary Beauty Peak, but when we eventually found it, the entry price of 70RMB (7 pounds) was so steep that we just left it. That's one of the only annoying things that I've found about China (well, apart from the smelly squat toilets-see below)- anything that is a tourist attraction, from parks to peaks is charged for, and quite often the charges seem disproportionate to the attraction itself- as for example, with Solitary Beauty Peak!!It's never stopped us from doing and seeing the things that we really want to, but it is frustrating that some times we've had days when we're constantly reaching into our purses just to do something as simple as climb to the top of a hill!!Anyway, we went for another riverside stroll after that disappointment, and had a little paddle in the (surprisingly cold)water before going to the busy night market area just behind our hostel to get some dinner. We shared some really delicious roast goose with plum sauce and beef spare ribs, which perked me up a bit, I love chinese food so much!!

On Tuesday we'd planned to go to the Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces which are a few hours away from Guilin out in the countryside, so we headed off to the bus station and caught a very crowded bus to Longsheng, which is a bit of a scuzzy industrial town where the buses to the rice terraces go from. The journey was pretty sweaty and cramped, but I was wedged between a french canadian girl and a dutch guy so we were able to have a bit of a chat to pass the time!Both Jade and I were bursting for the loo after the 2 hour bus journey on bumpy roads though, especially Jade as she's been trying to drink lots of water to keep hydrated in the heat, so we rushed into the rather grotty bus station and frantically asked the ticket lady for the toilets. We ran in the direction she'd pointed, though we could definitely smell them before we saw them- and to our horror when we got inside they were even worse than we'd imagined!!It's quite hard to describe the horrific scene that met our eyes, but imagine if you will a toilet consisting of an open pipe running along the length of the floor, with four 'cubicles', each enclosed on both sides but with no door!!We were both so desperate for a wee we had to go for it and so we had to just squat right down and get on with it!!Jade managed to get the cubicle at the top but I was down from her so I got to see the lovely sight of my own pee going along the pipe as well as hers!!It was really rank, though definitely an experience!!!I have to say I'm pretty proud that we've been so good about toilets while we've been travelling, I've definitely gotten used to the squat loos that asian people seem to love, and I feel like they've definitely helped me find some leg muscles I didn't know existed, but you can't beat it when you go to the loo and miraculously find that they've got a western style toilet that you can actually sit down to use!!
Anyway, enough of that toilet talk... so anyway, we managed to get on the bus to Ping'an, one of the villages that make up the rice terraces, and after 45 minutes of windy mountain roads and beautiful scenery (waterfalls, mountains and lots of greenery) we arrived at the village. It's set up for tourists, with lots of stalls selling tat and places to get food (we got some fried rice for lunch), but it is also a working village where minority tribes people live too. Some of the woman are apparently from the 'long hair' people, and do have very long waistlength shiny hair that they tie up in big buns on the top of their head, and some of the tours take people to see a 'long hair' show, but Jade saw a long black-haired wig hanging out to dry when we were coming back to the bus so not sure how many of the ladies actually grow their own hair these days!!!Anyway, after a very hot and sweaty climb up many, many windy steps through the village, we finally made it to the 'Seven Suns and Moons' view point (I love how poetic all the chinese names for things are!!!), and the rice terraces are just spectacular. Surrounded by hundreds of massive limestone peaks, it's simply stunning, a landscape which is so otherworldly and unlike anything I ever expected to see, let alone in China. Definitely worth all the steps up! On the way back down, we got to observe the comings and goings of village life in Ping'an, including lots of REALLY old chinese ladies selling their crafts, cute kids running around, chickens scratching about, horses carrying heavy loads up the mountain and even village ladies carry suitcases on their backs on the steep climb to the guesthouses dotted about the place- I don't know how they do it!! When we headed back to Guilin, we were able to get on two quite luxurious buses to Guilin directly without going through Longsheng (no more smelly drain toilet for us thank God!), both of which were showing James Bond films weirdly enough, so we had a fun journey back.

On Wednesday we left Guilin for Yangshuo via a bus down a veeeeery bumpy road to Yangdi, a bamboo boat down the Li River for 2 and a half hours, a golf cart along another extremely bumpy road and another bus from XingPing to Yangshuo. Quite a journey!We met two French Canadian sisters travelling together, Katherine and Genevieve, so it was nice to have a bit of chat with them, and we were able to get them to take a few snaps of us along the river when we stopped on a little inlet which had cows on it taking mud baths to admire the scenery. Again, so beautiful and otherworldly, with all the hundreds of peaks literally coming out of the water, and the mist hanging about the tops of them because of all the humidity added to the effect. We arrived in Yangshuo around half 2 on Wednesday afternoon and headed to our hostel on a little rickshaw thing (our first, and I'd say last, in China as we're leaving tomorrow!) from the station. The hostel itself is fine, with the standard wooden bunk beds and clean white bed linen, and it's in a great location, just off the main street, West Street, where all the shops, cafes and restaurants are. but surprisingly enough it's the first place we've stayed in (including India) with a squat toilet!!It's odd and Yangshuo is a real traveller hub, and our hostel, Yangshuo 11, has only been open since September so you'd think they'd cater for western toilet habits but we've only come across one western toilet in the 6 days we've been here!!Anyway, I seem to keep coming back to toilets in this blog so moving on... We spent the afternoon getting a feel for the place, and realised that we were a few seconds walk away from the Li River which is cool, though the current here is incredibly fast and although you can swim in the river, we've just paddled our feet a couple of times for fear of getting swept away!There's a little market-y thing at the bottom of our street too, with stalls selling the usual chinese souvenirs and art so we've bought a few bits and bobs. That night we had delicious dumpling and pork buns for dinner (Jade keeps craving them!), then headed back to our hostel, where we settled in with a movie as our hostel doesn't have a bar, but the two friendly Chilean guys who were sharing our room with us invited us out for a few drinks at the nearby rooftop bar in Monkey Jane's one of Yangshuo's more well established backpacker hostels. We went along and had a great night chatting over a few very cheap local beers with Dorron and Alex, who are taking a sabbatical from medical school in Chile, two aussies, Jordan and Jannine, vets who are travelling until their money runs out, and some english girls, Jenny, Kate and Anna who are on their pre-uni gap year. The game of the house is beer pong, a cross between ping pong and your standard drinking game, where the aim of the game is to throw ping pong balls into your opponents 6 beer-filled plastic cups, thus making them drink the cup in question!We watched that night, but did have a match against Jordan and Jenny a few nights later, and although we didn't win, we weren't half bad!

On Thursday we spent the morning doing lots of boring practical things like sorting our Vietnamese visas out, as one of the managers at our hostel has a guy who can sort them out from Yangshuo in a few days, meaning that we wouldn't have to head to Nanning and get them there, which was are original plan. Good for us as Nanning doesn't appear to have that much going for it apart from lots of travel agents who sort out Vietnamese visas!! So, we sorted that out, and booked extra nights in our hostel as we're now leaving here on an overnight bus tomorrow (Wednesday) night in order to get to Vietnam, bypassing Nanning. In the afternoon, we had lots of fun taking part in a 3 hour cookery course at one of the local restaurants, Cloud 9. The two of us, as well as two (very annoying) ladies from the US, a couple from Switzerland and a girl our age from Germany, were in the class together with our teacher Jenny, which started with all of us deciding which three dishes we would cook out of a big list. We all agreed on Gung Bao chicken with peanuts, pork dumplings and beer fish, which is a local speciality. We then went on a trip to the local farmer's market. I was prepared for it somewhat as one of the English girls the night before had shown me her pictures from when they went, but we saw lots of very interesting sights there, including bamboo rat (which basically looks like roadkill) and half a dog strung up... it definitely wasn't for the faint-hearted!!It was great to have someone there to tell us all the names of the different fruits and vegetables though, and it seems to be a very vibrant place with lots going on and deals being made everywhere!We headed back to the restaurant and donned our chef's hats and wee aprons, and the class began. Firstly, the teacher showed us how to chop up all the pre-prepared vegetables and meat with the rather scary cleavers we all had, as well as explaining the different properties and uses of the seasoning ingredients such as soy sauce and sesame oil. Then it was time to cook!!First we prepared the dumplings, and we each had steamers with separate number on so after they were cooked we'd be able to eat our own creations. Then we made the Gong Bao chicken, a spicy sichuan speciality, before we were able to eat our handiwork in the restaurant down below the cookery kitchen. If I do say so myself, my efforts were delicious!Finally, we headed back up to fry up the beer fish (made with catfish, fins and all!) in the wok, and Jenny came round and poured a good whack of local beer in each of our woks to make the famous dish. We got to eat that too, though my belly was bursting by the time we had finished!!At the very end, we got given receipe print outs of our dishes, so we can recreate them at home. By the way mum and dad, I will be preparing you a special chinese dinner at some point when I get home again, I hope you'll enjoy it!!We chilled out that evening again at Monkey Jane's, and made plans to cycle to Moon Hill with the English girl's we'd me the night before.

Next day, it had rained during the night and we weren't really in the mood for a long day of cycling, and neither were the other girls, so the two of us decided to head to the nearby town of Fuli for a bit of a day trip, as a very helpful woman in the place we'd gone to a couple of times for breakfast had recommended it as the local people handmake fans and do lots of rice paper painting too. We hopped onto a bus and 20 minutes later got dropped off in what seemed to be a signficantly more busy town than we'd been expecting, with traffic everywhere and no sign of any quaint locals doing any fan making!!It was market day, so we had a little jaunt around the stalls, which were selling all sorts of things from mosquito repellant to baby clothes (and I saw some poor puppies in a cage as well as a big bloodied sack next to them- three guesses what that contained : ( ) , and somehow we eventually found what looked like a path towards a quieter stretch of town, and after a few twists a turns we came to a lovely little cobbly street with loads of fan workshops, selling handmade fans and beautiful chinese art work. We stopped off at 5 or 6, and although the people were trying to sell us their work, they were so friendly and not that bothered when we didn't buy anything but just watched them painting or fan making!The weather took a bit of a stormy turn at one point, but only a bit of light rain so we took shelter under the canopy of a simple lakeside cafe, and had a drink while watching the world go by. Despite the large amount of tourists in the area, once you get out of the centre of Yangshuo it is such a peaceful area, and it was really relaxing just watching the boatmen on the river and local young people going from a swim. That night we managed to wrangle a cheap deal to go and watch a bit of coromrant fishing on the river. We were in quite a noisy tour boat and set out just after dusk, following behind a fisherman and his six coromorants on board a small bamboo raft as he moved the boat to and fro, getting them to dip into the water (apparently going as deep as 10m in one go) to search for fish. They have a small ring around their gullets so they can't swallow the larger fish, but they're allowed to eat the smaller ones they catch. It was quite interesting to watch, but hard to get any decent photos as we were moving about so much, and the birds didn't manage to get any big fish!I think this type of fishing is quite rare, and only practiced in this part of China, parts of Japan and Macedonia, so it was cool to be able to watch it, but it did feel very much like a 'touristy' thing to do. You may have seen it before in a recent HSBC, and our tour guide claimed that our fisherman was the one who was actually in it as if was filmed in Guilin, but Jade youtubed it and we're not so sure!!We did get to hold one of the bird on our arm though, which was cool, though a bit scary!!

On Saturday we'd planned to go on a bike ride with people from the hostel to Dragon bridge, which is about 4 or 5 hours there and back, but unfortunately the heavens really opened and there was more thunder, so we just decided to have a lie- in!!We spent the rest of the day watching movies at the hostel, eating lots of good chinese food (of course) and we discovered the internet cafe that I'm in at the minute- basically a massive room filled with about 200 computers, all of which have widescreens and are super speedy, though the place is filled with smokers unfortunately- where I spent a good few hours uploading all my photos onto flickr (and starting to write this blog, though the laid back nature of this place has meant that I've taken 3 days to finish it in between all the relaxing!!). We bumped in Jordan and Jannine (the aussies who we'd had a few drinks with at Monkey Jane's) as they were watching a film at our place, and decided to meet up the next morning for breakfast and a cycle ride to Moon Hill. Finally we'd get to go on some bikes!!! The weather held up so we were able to rent bikes on Sunday, and after a chinese breakfast of dumplings for me (which went down surprisingly well), we set off through the town and on up towards Moon Hill, a distance of 8km. Apart from cycling in Hangzhou a few weeks ago, I haven't been on a bike since I was a young teenager so I'm not the best cyclist and a bit nervy of traffic, but once we got outside of the town, the scenery was great and it was really fun to cycle all together. We got to the hill after about half an hour of leisurely cycling, and after paying the entry fee (of course there's an entry fee for climbing a hill!) we started the climb. It was probably the hardest hill/mountain/great wall we've climbed on our trip so far, and we've done lots of climbing!!Jordan and Jannine showed lots of aussie resilience and kept climbing without any breaks, but as they had to get back to Yangshuo to catch a bus at lunch time, we urged them to keep going without us, and we puffed and panted , stopping every now and then when we needed to. We were both wearing flip flops too, as I hadn't wanted to be too hot in my big climbing shoes, and didn't really think the hill would be so steep, but eventually we got to the centre of the 'Moon', where we had a well-earned water break and admired the fabulous view. No wonder the climb was so stressful, we were really high up!!What put us to shame though was that there was a little old lady (one of quite a few) who had kind of latched onto us and was trying to sell us drinks, and she climbed up with us. Not once did she even break a sweat, and when I asked her she told me she climbed up the hill 9 times a day!!!unbelievable!!!I bought a drink off her in the end, although it was overpriced, as I was in awe of her!I hope I'm still as fit as a fiddle when I'm her age, though I really don't want to be having to climb small mountains every day to make a living!!!Anyway, the Chilean guys had told us about a 'secret way' up to the very top of the hill, by taken a well worn but unpaved path up past a 'no entry' sign, and the lady showed us where it was. The climb was pretty scary though, as it was literally just mud and big rocks on the 'path', and in flip flops we slipped and slid a fair bit. At one point I landed right on my bum, covering myself in mud- nice!We eventually made it to the top in once piece, and it was definitely worth it, with a clear view of the surrounding vista on all sides, I was so proud that we'd managed to do it!Also, my fear of heights didn't once rear it's ugly head, so I'm pleased about that. At the top we met a dutch lady and a rather annoying older guy from the US (who kept going on about how he worked out everyday- um, nobody cares!!), so we headed back down the trecherous path with them, and the lady did something to do with the environment, so she was able to tell us that all the peaks are actually growing taller due to something to do with water errosion (?!) which was pretty fascinating. We made it down the whole way in one piece, but with a few cuts and bruises between us (and a muddy arse in my case!), and took it nice and easy on our own back to Yangshuo and Jordan and Jannine had had to leave already. We were just coming down to West Street though when some crazy chinese lady went into me on her bike (she was actually stationary, but pushed her front bike wheel into my path) and I now have a very lovely huge bruise on my right arm to show for it. SO annoying!! It's kind of ironic that bicycles are the number one mode of transport here in China, with literally millions of chinese people using them everyday, but yet the majority of people are totally kamikaze riders (as we've discovered)!

That night, we decided to treat ourselves to a massage after our day of strenuous exercise, and went to a place just beside our hostel. I have to say it was the weirdest massage I have ever had- we were both in the same room at the same time, and fully clothed, while two ladies poked and prodded us for an hour of full body massage. Parts of it were quite relaxing, but my lady kept poking the top of my head really hard, and she really went for it on my legs and bag, pummeling away and clicking all my bones one by ones!!She went at my arm so hard that she even made my bike accident bruise bigger!!Anyway, suffice to say we woke up yesterday morning completely saddle sore, and our muscles were also tender from all the massaging so we took it pretty easy, paddling in the river, doing a bit of shopping and eating some great food. We had lemon chicken and beef with bitter melon for dinner, and a delicious claypot rice dish with barbequed pork, sausage, corn and peas for dinner, and to top off our chinese culinary odyssey, we decided to go to one of the many dessert places dotting the streets and sample what was on offer. After many minutes of staring at all the weird stuff on offer, a helpful chinese lady recommended a couple of things to us, and so Jade had fresh fruit with sago, and I had a mango dessert thing which was basically just pieces of mango in a sort of juice but it had a gigantic black gelatline ball in the middle, which looked and tasted really odd!!We also made the mistake of ordering a portion of durian ice cream to share... If you haven't heard of it, durian is an infamous fruit which is readily available in China and South-east Asia which looks like a massive green lychee and smells like rotting flesh, but our American friend Cody that we met in Goa had told us that once you got past the smell it tasted ok, so we decided to give it a go... The first taste was ok, as we realised that the ice-cream itself was in fact strawberry, and there was a layer of semolina underneath too, but right at the bottom was a layer of pureed durian. As soon as I tasted a tiny bit, I was nearly sick!!The taste, like the smell, is repulsive, sickly sweet with a really weird rotten undertone. We had to rush to Monkey Jane's to get beers so we could get the horrible after taste out of our mouths!!I definitely DO NOT recommend it!!!

So, that brings us right up to date to today, and again we'd planned to go to Dragon Bridge but unfortunately mother nature has quite literally peed on that plan again, with lots and lots of rain!!It's not so bad as it's not cold at all, just wet, and it means I'm able to write this lovely and very long blog for you to read, but it is a shame as if the weather isn't good tomorrow (which we are hoping and praying it will be), then we won't get to see it as it's our last day in China and we have to get back to Guilin to catch the bus by the evening. Finger's crossed though!

Anyway, best go here as I've gone on for long enough. Next time I blog it will be from Vietnam, so exciting!!!!

lots of love from Yangshuo xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx