Jing Xiu Scenis Mountain Villa Jinggangshan

... br>Our travel partners for the trip are two young Chinese. One a girl aged 23 and an 18 year old boy. They are visiting a friend in HK, the Chinese are only allowed 7 days in HK so they are taking the full week.

As it turns out they are band mates. The girl Leo is the lead singer and the boy the guitarist. On top of this ...

... in our town Taylor and Sarah. We all upgraded our tickets and had a private room with four soft sleepers. It was so nice and we got a good night sleep! Reminded us all of Harry Potter style cars, except we had nice beds and no amazing treats. Just ramen noodles and beer.

We arrived in Xi'an at 4:30 p.m. the next day. YAY!

... snakes and dog (particularly gruesome, Rich has a picture of a dog hanging up). As the dish I was cooking was Beer Fish (local speciality apparantley, I liked the sound of the beer ingredient personally), I had to go and pick a fish which of course was alive for about 10 seconds after i'd picked it before being bludgeoned. I didn't even have time to get to know the fish, find out its hobbies or interests or ...

... and vomiting black exhaust (contributing to Jiuzhaigou's own environmental downfall), while streams of red and yellow hat-wearing, litter-tossing tourists noisily follow a flag-waving guide shouting instructions into a loudspeaker. When pressed for an elucidation of the social and ecological consequences of collective traveling, a local tour operator rejoins fiscally, "I provide guaranteed transportation, accommodations and ...

... the locals on bikes with those cone hats(forgot the real name) it just puts you in the picture of rural China, even though loads of other backpackers get there, you still can find a quiet spot and watch the world pass by. Will never forget the backdrop here.

... before going to Ping An? It was only when I was reporting to the CITS office in Guilin, where I was to get the bus, and went rummaging for my ticket that it hit me - I didn't have my money belt, the money belt that contained my passport, credit cards, travellers cheques, cash, bus ticket..... everything. Now that wasn't a nice realisation. In fact it was terrible. Trying to recap where I last saw it lead me to believe it was still in my room in Ping An ...

... it was called changing faces and involved blokes passing their cloak sleeve in front of their face, and reappearing with a different coloured mask on. dont think im explaining that very well - what was so amazing was that they literally had the sleeve in front of their face for about half a second. i still havent worked out how they did it - maybe they had a mask up the sleeve, but really it all happened so quickly, im not sure. some of them even did a fire breathing thing which ...