Wow,

It's been a while since we updated the blogged, time flies when you're having fun. So we have two places to catch up on Guilin and Yangshuo.

We arrived in Guilin, its still a big city, but a smaller chinese city, in the south of china. We were there for 3 days and on our first night we spent most of the evening battling the chinese internet. Finally we managed to get Skype working on this laptop - unfortunately as I have now learned skype video calling doesn't work on android so we can talk but not see people. So we were up til about 1am chatting to the mums and dads.

The next day we visited the Reed flute caves - as the name implies its a set of caves, with some amazing rock formations a bit like Kungar but unlike Russia where they were all natural, china has to put neon lighting everywhere. It makes for some brilliant pictures but it is quite random walking through underground caves with strip lighting marking the edges of lakes.

As well as the caves we walked down town past the two pagodas and elephant trunk hill, nice enough but probably only worth around the outside.

Finally Claire and I went shopping for some clothes and nic nacs. Over the road from our hotel is a small chinese mall - which means its about twice the size of bluewater. It was split into three malls and the third was just full of catoon related toys, clothing, bags,etc. If you ever want a spongebob, plants v zombies, disney anything it was there. It even had its own tank! Luckily Karen wasn't with us or we'd have never left.

The next day we went to Yao mountain just outside Guilin. It had a huge gondola ride to the top so despite it being really hot we didn't have to fight our way up the mountain. However this gondola ride turned out to be less fun than expected. On the way up it covered some huge drops so I was not happy and about half way up we passed a spider on a wed the must have been about the size of my head. Even I was a little worried and I don't mind spiders. When we got to the top the views were pretty amazing so it was worth the trip. Oh and on the way down they had a huge toboaggan run.

The following day we got on the boat to Yangshuo. Four hours sailing through some of the most pretty scenary in China. Our cruise boat had 100 people and from what we gathered was one of a long line of boats heading down stream. But whether by luck or intent we didn't see any of the other boats the whole journey. We stood on top taking photos and marvelling at the various mountains (five finger mounting, nine hourses mountain, snail shell mountain, you get the idea) before arriving in Yangshuo about 2 in the afternoon.

We wandered around the village that afternoon - I say village but its a town and a very touristy one at that. One of the guys in our hostel described it as the newquay of china. After 7pm the streets are rambed with europeans and chinese and its party, party, party. Its the first hostel we've stayed in that puts as its selling points a roof top bar and beer pong. So as you can imagine we've spent too much and had too little sleep since we've been here.

So far we've had one full day here and we hired bikes and cycled to Yulong bridge. Once you leave the town
The scenary changes quickly and we saw very few people for the 10miles we cycled. You really get the sence of being in rural china now. Paddy fields, fisheries and cattle everywhere. By the time we arrived at the bridge it was about 3pm and we were tired so after a bit of haggling we got ourselves and our bikes on a bamboo boat and went down the Yulong. For two hours we saw practically no one. This was definitely a highlight of the journey and on the way we had to go down nine small waterfall/wiers. Only a few feet high but when you are on a glorified raft with your camera and the front half of it disappears under water its very worrying.

We finally arrived home and went out for dinner in the party that is Yangshuo by night, finishing the evening at Monkey Janes watching a beer pong tournament. So its 11am now, claire is sleeping upstairs and I'm enjoying the aircon. We still have two days here before hong kong so we are hoping to get out into the country again.

Team P