Li-An Lodge Guilin

... amp; Stars) & then across the ridge to Viewpoint 1 ( 9 Dragons & 5 Tigers). I can understand the 9 dragons as from this viewpoint you see the 9 terraced ridges that look like the bumps on the dragons back, but couldn't see how the tiger thing worked into it.





It was a great walk across the ridge as the multitudes in the coaches didn't do it so there was ...

... the trek listening to me shout 'Hurry up!!!' each time he stopped to take a photo!

We made it to the Pingan region at 3pm and were told by locals that Pingan village was still a 2 hour hike away. Tom spotted a dirt road and we asked how much a mini bus taxi would be. We walked away laughing when asked for 200 rmb (20pounds),but deep down we knew we were tight on time. We kept going, picking up our speed and glad that we weren't missing much ( as ...

... at the Yangshuo Tourist Vocational School. There were about 200 of them almost all girls. This is the program I helped last year when the school only had about 175 students. Now over 400. The program is designed by the local government to give kids who could not get into a good high school or a university program something to do rather than get into the workforce. So I was asked to give them a pep talk on the importance of ...

... and demonstrating combs for an hour. It was funny, everyone was watching and listening and when it came time for people to buy them they all complained about how cheap they were so that they could get their bargaining process off to a good start. Some ladies talked about those combs amongst themselves for a few hours afterwards, haha anything to keep themselves entertained. I climbed on to my bed to read which I did until they put the lights out at 10, thank god I had a book. I ...

... objekti s 25 ali vec nadstropij gradijo kot tipski objekti v poljih po 30 objektov naenkrat. Po prihodu v center mesta pa sva tudi ze naletela na prve tezave. Ugotovila sva, da ni mogoce videti veliko popotnikov, kot v drzavah, ki sva jih obiskala predhodno in je uporabnost anglescine skoraj nicna. Mnogo bolj uporabna je govorica rok, kalkulator v dlani za pogajanje glede cen in vodnik Lonely Planet Kitajska. Umetnost je najti ze kaksen hotel, saj jih velika vecina nima ...

... town to go shopping) and then spent at least 2 hours looking for and failing to find an internet cafe... Giving directions is not a strong skill set amongst Chinese hostel workers... we asked three different employees, got three very different answers, all of which were incorrect... le sigh... The next day we went and did what Xi'An is famous for... we visited the Teracotta Warriors... This is a display of thousands of life-size teracotta ...

... to contemplate, but at least most viewers would have been asleep and not noticed them! Anyway, after that we turned off the telly, grateful that we had arranged to meet our guide no earlier than 10.30 the next morning. Saturday 9th August Alison: I had brekky with the kids and then we met our guide Ada in the foyer, a very nice girl with pretty good English. She first took us to Duxiu Feng ...

... the whole time, all by hand. Once the tree was down it was time for me to move on. We were told it was only a 4 hr trip up there, so I thought if we left super early (around 8 am) we would get there with enough time to hike around, stay the night and head back. Well as I've learned here in China, you need a lot of patience and need to be flexible. We didn't end up getting there till closer to 3 pm, so two nights were needed. No big deal as I'm not ...

... we got to the top there was one other tourist - a Chinese women and her husband. The women insisted that we take a photo together - and it was very peaceful and wonderful looking across the valley. Yesterday's tour was a different story. After being repeatedly pestered to buy water and drinks from elderly women who grab our arms and kept saying "helllooo" - "helllooo" you buy water, you buy water, we told them we were cheap and skin ...

... back of my eyes. At the end of the tour it became apparent that I wasn't going to get out alive without spending lots of the foreign tourist dollars to buy Chinese medicines to take home, so I parted with some money to buy some arthritis liquid.

Another Chinese banquet for tea, though I managed with effort to convince the guide and driver that it was okay to sit with me, as it was getting rather lonely having every meal by myself.