Day 10 Guilin After descending from the Rice Terraces, we commandeer a minivan with a Scottish couple who are the first people we have really spoken to since being away, to take us the two hours to Guilin. The guy looks like Billy Connelly and is wearing a Scottish football top just in case anyone mistakes him for being English I suppose. We are being approached quite regularly by Chinese people who want their photo taken with a westerner and some kids at our...

Day 8 and 9 - Rice Terraces of Longji An early morning flight from Xian sees us arrive in Guilin to a much more South East Asia feel in terms of climate and greenery.We had arranged for a driver to pick us up and take us the 100km or so north to the Longji rice terraces of the "semi autonomous" Zhuang people (whatever that means). Golden week is still haunting us as the traffic into the area is bad - basically city chavs from out of town driving throu...

Day 7 - XianThe end of week one saw the weather warming up at last.Today we went to see the Terracotta Warriors and decided to "go it alone" and make our own way there using public transport - after all we are on a 3 month trip and our sponsorship is limited!!Being the first day of the national holidays, "Golden Week", the whole of China had the same idea that visiting the Terracottas would be a great day out.After an hour queuing for the # 30...

Day 6 - Hua Shan (Holy Mountain) A visit to one of the five sacred Taoist mountains, Hua Shan, 120km west of Xian was supposed to be a welcome break from the noisy crowds but we made our first school boy error by booking onto a Chinese language guided tour bus as this was a bit more off the beaten track for westerners.Usually a fan of the back of the bus, on this occasion our bus was a baking hot oven with upright seats and non-stop mandarin commentary.After an...

Day 5 - Xian Xian is the staging post for a trip to the Terracotta Warriors and with 5 million inhabitants it used to be the imperial capital between 1000BC and 1000AD. After a cosy night on the train it was a rude shock to alight in Xian in the pouring rain and to be confronted by a riot of people trying to take us to the Teracottas rather than our hotel. The highlights of our day touring Xian mostly inside the old city walls in the rain was the street mark...