Guilin Royal Garden Hotel (T)

Our first holiday of the year coincided with our first paycheck of the year. How convenient. The National Day holiday, which celebrates the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949, provided us with an 8 day holiday after a mind-numbing 30 days of work. It is, however, our last real holiday until Chinese New Year in February, 2010, when we will have a month off. Time to get in to a routine here and save some yuan.<br><br>We ...

... out, we don't think they know that in other countries thay do that for a very different reason! Protesting against the government isn't exactly commonplace here! <br><br>Got the train this morning at 11. When we got on we were put in seats away from each other. Lucy got boxed in by three teenage boys and I was sitting with two girls and two older men. Things got off to a dodgy start as the stares were unbelievable. Going to go into more detail on this ...

... are going to have a ball with all this stuff. Just looking through some of the boxes as they brought them up was like a huge Christmas, birthday, whatever party. <br><br>Had Open Talk a little late and had a dinner brought in for all the helpers. <br><br>Thursday, September 17th: Getting ready to go to Guilin in an hour. Thought I would get this off to all of you. By the way if you see anything you would like to buy email me hahaha.<br><br><br><br><br>

... vangen op het moment dat ze nooit zelf een visje mogen opeten... Hoe dan ook, een happy ending. Terug aan wal zijn we een hapje gaan eten. Op de slang moesten we even wachten. Die werd, na een half uurtje, vers en levend in een plastic tas door de drukke toeristenstraatjes aangevoerd. Voordat de slang de pan in ging mochten we hem zien en vasthouden. Of hij giftig was kon de mevrouw ons niet vertellen. (niets voor mij dus). Het idee van het eten ...

... i could think of in my panicky state was probably not too appropriate.....luckily most of the chinese tourists could not understand english so were not offended my Marvin Gayes, 'lets get it on' but didnt it make me any less embarassed!!...so the ceremony was finished off with some rice wine drinking and the girl jumping on my back for some reason. all the while i was having my ass constantly pinched by the girls behind (its polite apparently) which just added up be to ...

... hablan por si solas, una cueva natural del tamaño de un estadio increíble!! Cuando salimos de la cueva la lluvia estaba menos y nos fuimos para el parque mas importante de la ciudad, que la verdad no era la gran cosa, terminamos el dia caminando por la calle peatonal de Guilin, otro lugar precioso, ahí Caro se compro un vestido chino lindísimo. Terminamos el dia en un bar tomando una cerveza algo de picar y nos causo mucha gracia escuchar a Julio Iglesias en Chino!!! Jaja j aja ja.

... thank you in advance for your patience. Long story short, we are officially on vacation as of Friday June 27. Unfortunately, we have not yet left Jiangyong to do the traveling we had hoped to do this summer, as our passports are languishing somewhere in Nanning, Guangxi Province. Our current visas expire July 16th, so we had sent our passports to Buckland to get working on obtaining our new visas back in May. Sadly, we're still waiting for all of ...

... expediate our journey time to Lijiang in the south-west. So we ventured out into the rain, into quite a bustling city. Considering this is China, I'll probably be referring to all cities as bustling but we were still surprised to see so many skyscrapers, huge malls, serious eight-lane roads running through town and obviously hoardes of people. It took a good half-hour walk before we edged into the more leafy and calmer ...