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 little bit too big to cross easily. There was a local person's bamboo raft tied up that we had considered 'borrowing’, Claire looked upstream for a narrow place to cross but in the end I found a bamboo stick and crossed over some dodgy stepping stones and all the others except Craig took ok their shoes and crossed where Craig just walked through in his shoes.

When we got back to Xing Ping the plan was to get the bus back to Yangshuo, which Claire did and the rest of us decided it would be nice to head back to the hotel on a bamboo raft. We found a guy offering his raft and we managed to get him to agree to the 5 of us on two boats down to Yangshuo for 200 Yuan (£20) per boat. Fairly reasonable we thought, especially as it was 2 hours down river and then it would be around 4 hours for them to get back up river!

We went off with Claire and the aid of a Chinese guy we met on the walk and made sure that she got on the right bus back to Yangshuo. Then we followed our bamboo boat guy for about 10 minutes to his boat, got introduced to his uncle who was going to be driving (sailing) the other boat) and then handed over the money.

Craig and I go on one boat as we were the heaviest and the 3 girls took the other boat. The two hour trip down river was amazing. The views were picture postcard scenes around every corner and Craig and I who both had digital SLR cameras took loads of pictures all the way back.

We got dropped off somewhere close to our town, where we thought we had been dumped in the middle of nowhere, but as we walked down to the town we realised why. The river got quite rough close to the town and it would have been difficult for these bamboo rafts to get back upstream. Sorry Mr Bamboo Driver for doubting you!

As this was our last night in Yangshuo, we didn’t have a late one, we just went out for a group dinner and then everyone headed off to the internet cafe to send a few emails. As the internet cafe wouldn’t let me use Wi-Fi I HAD to head off to a bar that had free Wi-Fi (7th Heaven Hotel) and have a few beers while I updated my blog.