Hey, Am now finally in China after numerous arguments over my visa. Solo travel is so much fun more than i thought anyway - sees like you do loads more stuff. Everyone i've met so far in china is soloing it like me and have yet to have a day exploring by myself! First morning in china i woke up and headed down to river to sit and relax only to find a load of locals practising Tai Chi - the blokes had swords and the girls fans! Spent a while making a fool of myself there and being a source of general amusment to all the locals. Beer (pint size bottle) here can be bought for as little as 20p, so my beer belly promises to become fairly impressive. Then i headed out to some mountain area where i was the only white guy i saw for 3 days! So was the object of much unabashed starring and giggling. Am now in Yangshou which is this sweet hippy traveller place stuck in the heart of the most awe inspiring land i've seen yet. It seems that bamboo raft is the way to cross the river and is brilliant. Tried to see if i could buy one from a local and head off down the river and see how far i got but apparently waterfalls and rapids are a bit of a nusience especcialy standing on 5 bamboo shoots tied together with string! Tommorow am off to some mud cave i heard about which is a huge cave filled with pools of water and mud where you can swim and the like - apparently its theraputic for your skin so i expect to emerge with skin to rival those girls on the loreal adverts! Or maybe not. Still im not exactly sure where it is but hey im sure ill end up somwhere atleast. Next part of trip i may/may not be teaming up with some Isreali dude. I reckon he's crazy and he thinks im nuts so we seem to compliment each other pretty well. (But there's no vioce of reason, Chris - as it should be!) Anyway think ill be off, may challenge some local to a drinking game, seems the thing to do - xpt that no travellers are quite sure of the rules and loose with amazing grace due to getting drunk in record time. Edd