We arrive in Yangshuo and immediately love the place, no smog, no high rise buildings and alot more rural scenery. On the overnight train we were given a list of activities to chose from, so here is what we did: Carrie 1 hr Mah Jong lesson, so clearly now I am an expert. Very similair to rummy really (Mum and Laura you would love it!). I think I may well host a szechuan feast with my new silk table runner as decoration followed be a civilised game of Mah Jong ...

All aboard the Ms Fortune, why would you call a boat that?! Pleasantly surprised to find that it was a proper little cruise ship with seperate rooms, restaurant and bar as opposed to the rickity wooden boat we had pictured! The first night we did venture into Chongqing (don't bother if you are planning a visit it is nasty, with chicken carcases lining the streets in plastic bags waiting to be picked up by the local restaurants). Carrie felt the urge to sample som...

Continuing on from our jam packed day of Panda's and giant buddha, it was time to head to our first monastery (Bao Guo) on Mount Emei. The guide told us that Emei stands for E "Female" Mei "Eyebrow" , yes Mount Emei is translated as Female eyebrow mountain!! As we were to discover this wasn't the only thing that didn't translate very well, check out the photo of our favourite sign so far, there are many more where this one came from. (Believe ...

Hoorah, we are out of Xi'an and out of the smog. It's amazing where 16 hours on a train goes when you are playing the amazing 'backpacker' card game with your friends (Thanks Mandy they are a hit!!) and drinking more giant bottles of pi jiu (beer). With so much time to spare brainwaves occur and we realised that STA are so rubbish - the single entry visa they sold us for China is infact useless seeing as we need to re-enter China to get to Hanoi after Hong Kong. ...

You'll all be glad to know that we survived our 1st overnight train trip, if anyone ever tells you that '21' is the best drinking game in the world - don't believe them. It's not!!! However, it did pass a few hours. Not really loving Xi'an it seemed the only thing to do was visit a pagoda called little goose, which was apparently split in 2 by an earthquake and then some 100 years later miraculously joined back together again with another earthquake, yeh right!! ...