Da jia hao! First of all I want you all to know that I am OK. I am in China right now, but I didn't even feel the slightest tremble of the Sichuan earthquake even though I am only 800 kilometers as the crow flies from Chengdu. Secondly, I should really rephrase the first sentence, because I should not say 'I am OK' but 'We are OK' since I am tra...

Now, I only have a short time to write this, but I HAVE to tell you what happened to Tim and I yesterday. There we were--we had biked three miles though a bustling city and into a remote countryside area, where we stopped and then hiked up to one of the many mountains. We spent several hours there rock climbing, and I have to tell you, I DID IT!...

Friday, May 2 (cont.) When we arrived in Yangshuo, we found our hostel and managed to get changed to a private double ensuite room instead of the dorm that we had booked. So that was a nice surprise. We decided to just lounge around and explore the area around the hostel that day. We sorted a bamboo rafting trip and bike ride for the next day (8...

10-27-07........Got up this morning to the sound of children. I did not realize how many till I went out to breakfast. 5000 students had come to the River Li to clean it up. It was fantastic. They were like so many, like little crabs running over the rocks picking up grass and junk. Then carrying it to the street to be piled and wait for the cit...

We had a few reasons to visit Yangshuo, mainly the Li River and the Karst Mountains as well as it was not too far from Guilin where we would be taking our last Chinese flight on to Hong Kong and our final destination. We had read and heard that it was a very busy Western-tourist town with shops and restaurants catering for them BUT we had no ide...

On our first wedding anniversary on the 5th of August 2007 the hotel treats us with a hot air balloon flight. The driver picks us up at 5.30 am in the morning! Still tired we enjoy the short ride there with a 4 wheel drive. When we got to an unfinished part of the new motorway at the outskirts of Yangshuo/GoaTian town area we already saw them pr...

After a few days in Guilin, we packed up and set off for Yangshuo, a small town about an hour and a half to the south. Despite the short journey, it took us quite a while to actually get there.... We decided to just walk from our hotel -- it hadn't seemed that far on the bus... or so we thought. Half and hour to forty minutes later, we were fina...

Nathan here. After hearing nothing but good things about Yangshuo from some new friends from Scandinavia (thanks again ladies), Tara and I decided to investigate. We caught a flight from Chengdu to Guilin and took a boat ride down the very scenic Li River. While not cheap (about 400Y each), the four hour/53 km ride was incredible. An entertainin...

Last Stop in China-YANGSHUO, the place of DVDs and Pizza You'd think that we'd spend our last week in China absorbing as much as we possible could before moving on to Vietnam. Reality: we watched 2 movies a day, ate pizza and burritos, spent hours on the net and slept in as long as we could for 6 days straight. Although we have truly become more...

Crossing border to China was a breeze: no stupid questions at the passport control, no tiresome lines. From Shenzhen we've caught an overnight sleeper bus to Yangshuo. Suprisingly, even with my 6"1' I was able to stretch legs on the berth, so definitely sleeper buses are a reasonable way of trasportastion in China. A bit different story about th...