Currently on the bus back from tiger leaping gorge to lijiang. Just finished an incredible two days of trekking through the tiger leaping gorge in the foothills of the Himalayas at about 8500ft. Breathtaking scenery during the day and hundreds of perfectly clear stars at night.

From Guilin I went to fangchenggang on the south coast of china. It looked like a lovely place in the guide book but turned out to be pretty boring with absolutely no english speakers, no tourist information and no wifi or Internet cafes. So I decided to go to vietnam but was turned away at the border because they don't issue visas at the border (my rubbish guide book said they did)! So I returned to nanning for a couple of nights and stayed in a lovely hostel and met some cool people.

Then I travelled to Kunming with Nicole who I met in the hostel. We went to the 'dwarves empire' in the mountains the day we arrived! That night we met three teachers (Canadian Joseph, American Kevin and Australian Jason) and Kevin gave us and Joseph a tour of Kunming the next day.

Then we (me Nicole and joseph) took a nine hour train to Lijiang which is a beautiful small town full of classic chinese buildings and interesting little shops. It has forty thousand residents and sees five million tourists pass through every year. We stayed one night before catching the bus to the gorge at 7:20am the next day. I have one day in lijiang tomorrow before catching a sleeper train to Kunming, then flying to Egypt via hong kong.