Changtai Hotel Guiping

... a bit better. Just a cough now and a bit bunged up. Yangshuo is lovely - nicest place we've been so far I think. Its got loads of little shops and not so many hawkers on the streets trying to sell you stuff. Maybe I'm feeling more comfortable because its more tourist aimed and there are a lot of backpackers here. Had a nice hot chocolate by the river at lunch and ...

... through farmlands growing Persimmons and Pomelo fruit before finding our boat. We sat on the front of the boat, outside of the seating area, to get the best view possible. It was hard to know where to look first or take a photo of next as there were so many amazingly shaped Karst Mountains wherever we looked. The hazy misty weather and the light turning to dusk made for a very surreal landscape. On our trip upriver we had ...

... you can spot her in the photos on flickr.. (www.flickr.com/photos/jhnhtt).. But the views, well they were just second to none, the scenes from the back of the 20 yuan note was even more impressive than any of the images I had seen before.. (again check the photos) the mad part was that we were sat down for lunch at the point the boat was steaming through.. (one of the most famous scenes the river has to offer) so I had to bolt up stairs on deck to check it out and snap a few shots.. and ...

I thought I would ease my return to China with a few days in Yangshou, one of the more relaxed little places I visited at the beginning of the year. Surprisingly little has changed in the past 8 months, aside from my old hostel being totally gutted in the course of renovations, forcing me into what turned out to be a much more comfortable place. It's still easier to get around without Chinese than ...

Today was our trip to Long Ji. After being told to be ready at 7:30 am, we were taken to an empty bus and advised to go and have breakfast as it would not be leaving for half an hour. We put some clothes on the front seats to save them and went off to have a simple breakfast of noodles and congee. Our fellow passengers were a mixture of European and local tourists and Joe, the guide, spoke good English once he had finished his spiel in Mandarin. The three-hour trip was quite ...

Breakfast at The Flying Dutchman, because I wanted a Dutch Farmer's breakfast - a toasted cheese sandwich and a very nice omelette with lots of vegetables topped with cheese, muesli with yoghurt, coffee and a fresh water-melon juice. Very good value at Y26. Yoong's English breakfast was not so good. It came with two poached eggs instead of scrambled - which is okay - but the sausages were just Chinese fish balls in a sausage shape. We went for a walk along the river ...

We set off on our bikes with our guide, Thomas's sister, after a quick breakfast of local noodles. We were very pleased that she offered to swap bikes with Yoong, as hers had an umbrella attached. Yoong would not be able to hold up an umbrella and ride a bike at the same time. A lot of the ride was along busy main roads, but we eventually turned off down a bumpy dirt track, which took us to the bamboo rafts. The bikes were loaded onto the raft with us and our guide ...

... cycled past the point at which we needed to cross the river. Eventually we headed back to the right point and found someone to take us across the river. A man hastily strapped a couple of rafts together and loaded our bikes, we just had to stand on the raft and hope for the best. We eventually arrived in Fuli after 3 hrs (should have been 1hr tops). The centre looked very modern and there was a large local market where people were buying live chickens and getting their ...

... s a small wier which you just drop off. It's just like a tame log flume ride, and just like the theme parks theres someone there to take your photo. But in China when someone has an idea everyone copies, so after every wier there were numerous rafts with photographers all shouting at you to buy their photo of you (the rafts all had computers, printers and laminating machines and looked like mini floating offices). This also meant that as soon as we'd dropped off a wier our driver ...

... to help us, not hard in China, and we were shown a really good room overlooking the river. Yangshuo is a small town and very backpacker friendly, it felt quite European and seems to be full of restaurants and bars. At night, like European holiday desinations, each bar has someone outside trying to get you to go in and drink (not seen this anywhere ...