Today was a fairly short walk downhill from Ping'an where we caught a bus back to Guilin. We got back to Guilin and had 6 hours to kill before we could pick up our bags from the train station where we had left them a couple of days before catching the overnight train to Hong Kong.Most of us headed to the nearest internet cafe as this would pass some time. While here I checked Intrepid’s website and also the Foreign Office website to see what the situa...

We were up pretty early today as we had to get several busses to a village called Dazhai, apart from getting very bored, hot and sweaty the journey was very uneventful. We did stop at Guilin to drop our big rucksacks off at the lockers at the train station so that we only had to carry our day bags with us. Even that was a bit of a hassle as the woman at the train station wanted to open every bag to check them. Even then she only had a very quick look. Not sur...

Today, Craig & Jess, Emma & Jane, Claire and myself took a bus ride up to Yangdixian and did a 12 mile hike along the Li Jiang River down to Xing Ping, The hike was fairly easy following a path along the river going through several small villages and having to cross the river by local ferry/taxi bus while fighting off the bamboo rafters offering to take the tourists across. There was one part of the walk that we had to cross a small stream but it was just that ...

Booking a cookery course this early in the morning was not a good idea!I was woken up at 9:30 by the phone ringing in the room saying that Kelly was waiting downstairs for me in the hostel lobby. Whoops, I should have set my alarm, but just completely forgot. I quickly got dressed and headed out.First off we went to the local market and picked up a few ingredients, we were pre-warned and some people left the market, but when we were taken through to the meat se...

Today we met early for breakfast and planned our day. We were to go off for a bike ride along the Yu Long River. The lonely planet guide book recommended bike Asia for renting bike as you got a better quality bike, whereas Roy said that the bike they rent were perfectly acceptable. I said that I would rather pay a little more and get a better quality bike and some of the others agreed so off to bike Asia we went. 5 of us paid the £3.50 extra and got a light ...