11 - 13 February

The train ride to Guilin was so dull. Twenty six hours on a hard sleeper seemed far longer than five days on the Trans Siberian Express. We were desperate to get off by the time I arrived.

We booked two nights in a dorm room in Flowers Youth Hostel. The room was basic, but the social room was great. It had DVDs, a pool table and the occasional rat running through it, but that was something we would have to get used to. When we got off the train we got a KFC because everything was closed and headed straight to bed.

Adam had a bad stomach the following day and we met a lad called Aaron in our dorm who we ended up spending a few days with.

We didn't really have time to do much in Guilin, but we did go to Quixing Park, which was full of wild monkeys, mountains and caves that we could explore. We spent the whole day there and then at night we had a few beers.

In the morning I took my first malaria pill and I was very ill, but we had to catch a bus to our new destination two hours away, the beauty that is Yangshuo.