After waking up we organized our day over a western style breakfast; well sort of western style.

Got help from one of the helpful persons working at our hostel, give us tips to get around.

Took the city bus to our first spot, the red flute caves.

On the bus the people were friendly in helping us get off in the right spot. Noticing a great difference in interaction with the people on public transit: Shanghai and Beijing as you fight for your own spot regardless if your old or disabled, as we seen here elderly where offering us spots and other elderly were offering their spot for even more elder people... It was a nice change!

The red flute caves were pretty cool but not worth the price $15 Cnd each, which is a lot here in China.

Took the bus back into the city center and visited the elephant hill, a cool little mountain that has an elephant like shape. Climbed a lot of stairs to reach the top which provided great views of the off set mountains and city view.

Hung out at the hostel for a bit and went for a dinner later at night: their menu included and not limited to rat, pigeon, turtle, snake and everything in a chicken. We thought to play it safe with a pork and peppers dish and a fried beef dish: wrong, really wrong we were. The beef was mostly just fat and the pork was like just eating thick bacon fat... Mmmm Mmmm good.

Walked back to our hostel to a nice surprise, a women singing with a bunch of old men playing a Chinese like violin. They were very welcoming and yet a random place to play music, under a bridge buy the water... Yet surreal. A few minutes past a Aussie and a Man from Israel joined in the viewing. They played a bunch of songs in our presence and gave a good farewell. Spoke a bit with the two gents and went to bed.

Soaking in another Canadian like breakfast we packed our room and left for Yangshuo, about 1.5 hours South from Guilin.

Arriving in town we walked the sights for a bit, then rented bikes and road the country side for a bit then back to town for some tasty lunch.

After lunch we knew Yangshuo had an exotic market so we got directions to it. Knowing they had dog meat there already we were not expected to see or feel what we did. We will not go into to much detail but about a minute walking into the market when seen our first dog hanging, already cooked. Seeing cats in cages awaiting their destination was hard, seeing cooked dog was expected but seeing dogs in cages and then getting pulled out with a large, and in way of saying it; breathtaking yelp, their last, we could not handle to look nor continue in this market. We rushed out side in a sickened feel, after this we had no desire to be in Yangshuo, the beauty is amazing but I guess you can say that market ruined our afternoon.

Its hard to compare cultures and why people do what they do: the best quote we can say is "where not in Kanas no more" which is a perfect example of knowing our values and lifestyle is not emulated everywhere, and this does need time to sink in.

We are now waiting around at our hostel for a bit, waiting to go to the train station.

We have a 13 hour trip to Shenzhen. We get on the train at 21:20 and will pretty much head to bed and wake up and be in Shenzhen.

From there we will head to Hong Kong and enjoy a little more freedoms then
main land China.

Hopefully upload our pictures to facebook.

It's 5 days to xmas and we have totally forgot the feel of that Christmas build up, only the tacky Chinese Xmas decorations remind us of the holiday.

Until HK, happy shopping and a great start to your holiday.

Cheers!

T&M