I am sick of losing to Antony.No matter what we play, he wins.I try to act like I don't care, I say "I'm just playing for fun, it's just down to luck".Rubbish!No one wins on luck for 8 hours straight which is just what happened when we flew to Guilin from Lijiang via Kunming. We had a long layover and paid a high price for 'VIP' tickets but beat the other option which was a 30 hour train ride.But I am getting off the point, I hate losing cards to Antony but seeing that he is the only other person I know in China I figure that I just need to get better and then whoop him so bad that he pleads for mercy.

From the Lijiang runway we got our first and only look at Jade Dragon Snow Mountain which is something like 6000m high and snow capped.The weather wasn't great so we never had a chance to see it hovering over the town, so we were pleased to see it albeit for a minute or so.The journey was painless (apart from torture mentioned earlier) and we arrived in Guilin, ready to see the famous 'karsts' that are like little mountain peaks poking straight out of the ground.I'm sure that those of you with an interest in geology would have cringed reading that description, but that's what they look like to me!

We only stayed in Guilin two nights, enough to walk around, do some shopping, book travel arrangement to Hong Kong and meet older man from Yorkshire.He was a very nice; retired and traveling alone in China for 6 weeks so we asked him if he wanted to have dinner with us.He told us that a trip like this was once in a lifetime, apart from a return trip he has planned in February to visit a young Chinese woman that he met when he was on a Yangsee river cruise.She doesn't speak English and he doesn't speak Chinese, but they hit it off and he has already booked his tickets to come back!

The next morning we did what our friend Dan warned us not to do. He said that the Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo was 'awful' but the guidebook suggested that it was a 'highlight' so we assumed that Dan was more hardcore than us that perhaps we would really enjoy it - and forked out $50/each for a 4 hour cruise.We were picked up at the hostel in the morning and got onto a big tour bus with an ultra-cheesy tour guide named Yang-yang.When we pulled into Yangshuo 2 hours late, having been fed a horrible lunch, hot from the broken air-conditioning, Yang-yang was not a very popular guy. Most people use the cruise as a chance to spend 3 hours in Yangshuo before getting on the bus and returning to Guilin but as we were late pulling in late (due to a knackered boat, loads of others were passing us the whole way) everyone had to walk straight to the bus and go back.Lucky for us, we were staying.On the boat everyone was grumbling that they were wasting their time, but we weren't bothered. When you have 9 months, you can allow a bit of wastage!

We have now checked into our beautiful hotel (splurging a bit), overlooking the river amongst the karst, and enjoying a wonderful meal and a drink or two. We are also playing cards again and some yin and yang is finally making an appearance and it looks like I'm winning at last!

R & A