Jingdu Hotel Liuzhou

... simple but very beautiful. The show was quite lively,the performer danced to very traditional music. Their musical instruments such as Lusheng, Dong-style Pipa and Suona etc. looked something different from those that I had seen in other ethnic area. The oil tea that they served me I like very much, something like the Gongcheng oil tea that I usually drink in Guilin. The locals told me the oil tea is a traditional staple of them. And they drink ...

... whole experience I vowed bot to use a tour guide again, especially since I like being alone anyway. So today I bought my train ticket. A soft sleeper, since that means less people would stare at me. I get to my room to find that I'm sharing with 3 other people. They look pretty young so I ask them if they're students. They say no, they work now. I asked what they do... As luck would have it, they're all tour guides...

... roasted or stir-fried. Interesting how this principle of Eastern Medicine applies so strongly to the cuisine as well. My Cooking School in Yangshou (3rd on this trip!) was extremely informative in explaining these principles and allowing us to test them out ourselves. In traveling through the countryside, I witnessed not only the grueling labor that goes into rice cultivation but also got a first hand look into how rural families truly sustain themselves on the land. In a ...

... for the day--relaxing on a raft going down the river--and I mentally pat us on the back for planning something that doesn't require too much movement or too many layers of clothes. Wiping off our lenses, Dan and I perch on the edge of the small cement pagoda at the top of this crag. We're about 25 stories up, it seems, as we look out over Yangshuo town, but our small peak is dwarfed many times ...

... weather, we were still soaking with sweat! We reached a small restaurant called the 3 Sisters Cafe, where we had Sprites and dad had a Local Beer, to mark our halfway victory. The next part of our journey was on the way back to Yangshou. A teeny tiny ferry took us to the other side of the river and we continued through the mountains on a dirty, rocky road, that was a little rougher on the behind. We were cycling right through farmers fields and rice patches, we could look up at those ...

... nicht so einfach. Bis nach London wuerde ich fuer nen Appel und nen Ei kommen, aber dann wird es teuer. Na ja, morgen geht es dann wohl schon weiter, sonst packt mich die Weihnachtsdepression wirklich noch. Und vielleicht entscheide ich mich ja doch Weihnachten in Vietnam zu sein. Aber wir werden sehen. es wird schon alles schoen werden und hoffentlich endlich richtig warm.{Emotic(wink)}

... the evening. Bit of a **** hole but serves the purpose of being near the border. Then it was into China. Huashan was our first stop which is in the Ningming County. The first thing I've noticed about China is everything is done bigger. A small town contains 1 million folk. There are over 660 towns with more than 1 million folk in them. The second thing I've noticed is that I'm a tourist attraction maself as people here ...

... if there were other translations as well- it's all down to the exact pronunciation. Plus how diplomatic the translator is! On my way back to base I found a key-cutter. I've been looking for one since the last airport where I lost one of my sets of keys going through security. Fortunately I had a spare set, but they were my last, and I didn't want to take a hacksaw to my backpack! The entire key-cutting operation was being run by a rather elderly looking gentleman ...

... single day! Guilin is river town, surrounded by karst formation rocks - the inverted 'u' shaped hills so famous from Chinese art even features on the 20 yuan note. We had plenty of opportunity to see the formations on our journey into town, and also the paddy fields around them. Perhaps most surprising though was the... err... 'innovative' use of the fast lane of the motorway. There wasn't much in the way of ...

... is always so good at gymnastics. The time past not to badly with at least some picturesque scenery out the window which was more than could be said for the state of the inside of train after a few hours, I'll just leave out the description of the toilet - still makes me shudder. One girl sitting opposite must have eaten an entire fields worth of sunflower seeds, hugely popular snack here, which by the time she was ...