Hello, it has been felt that I haven't been pulling my weight in writing up the blogs so I (Trish) am writing this one.

We left Hong Kong and got a ferry to Schezen. This is where we entered mainland China and had one of our smoothest border crossings. We flew to Guilin, got the bus into town and stayed in a nice hotel. The next day we found the foreigner street, ie coffee shops and signs we could recognise and also very cheap internet. We spent a lot of the day trying to come up with a plan for China and looked around the area.

Guilin is a small city so as there was not much happening we decided to go to Yangshuo which is only an hour away by bus. We had our first Chinese ambush in the train station with 5 Chinese people shouting over us at once when I was trying to buy bus tickets. It was a tad frustrating but it's just one of the many things in China we will get used to. We heard of a nice guesthouse just outside of Yangshuo so we headed there when we arrived, this was after a Chinese man told us we stupid for going there because we didn't go to his accommodation!!

The guesthouse was lovely, very relaxed, lovely food, good company and quiet. We hired bicycles and rode to Moon mountain. There is a circle in the mountain, hence the name and we climbed to the top to get magnificant views of the karst scenery surrounding us. I nearly died due to the cycling and walking so we relaxed that night.

We went to see an old bridge the next day (Dragon Bridge) and cycled into Yangshuo town to book our train tickets to Chengdu. We intended to go to a light show in Yangshuo town but we ended up chatting an Australian/Ecudorian couple so we missed it.

The highlight of Yangshuo however was the hot air balloon ride we took over the area. We left at 6.30am in the morning and rode for an hour. It was very smooth and we got to see the top of the mountains. Basically it was class.

We went back to Guilin after Yangshuo to get our 25 hour train journey to Chengdu. Surprisingly it was fine and quite comfortable. In Chengdu we went to see pandas in the breeding centre. Agh they are so cute. We walked around Chengdu and came to the People's Park in the centre of town and seen fountains dancing to music and then went to an Irish pub and watched a repeat of Ireland's awful performance against France. For dinner we had a Sichan hotpot. This is a speciality of the region and there is a pot of spicy boiling oil and not spicy oil. You decide what you want to eat and cook it in the hotpot yourself. It was very nice.

So we are deciding were to go from Chengdu now and when we decide we'll let you know!