Riverside Retreat Hotel Guilin

... bakery items, chips & chocolates. Not exactly healthy!!!

Squat toilet was pretty smelly but could have been worse. We arrived in Guilin at 5.30pm & just walked over the road to our hostel. We have a 4 bed dorm & are the only ones in it.

Been working out what we will do tomorrow & chatted with some Czech people living in San Francisco & travelling for a year. Eating at the hostel as can't be bothered going out.

... types.

But what of the chinese one child policy? Has it raised a generation of little emperors. I look at the children and do not see a problem.

Babies in arms, and they often are in someone's arms seem bright, alert and curious about the world around them from the safetly of those loving arms. Even Carl's beard is a source of intersest or amusement and not fear. These babies are not timid nor are they aggressive or demanding. I have not ...

... a half-dozen tiny cups of tea served to us by salespeople who assured us it would cure cancer, loose weight, and cure diabetes. Right. Well, at least it was free.

That night we purchased our onward train tickets, with no real regret.

The next day we had until 5PM before the train left. We had purchased hard-seat tickets, the cheapest available, without realizing that the train was K393. The classes of train in China (from best to worst) are Z, T, D, and K.

... and a half drving around the city of Guilin picking up one or two passengers at a time from various hotels. This became particularly annoying to us when at 9:30 am we drove directly by our hotel, from where we had been picked up hours earlier. The drive was another 2 hours from there, at which point we arrived at some small village where, our tour guide informed us over the van-mic, the famous long-haired women of the ...

... Being a foreigner in a (relatively) small city sure comes with more than its share of interesting experiences! Lastly, I added some pictures taken around Guilin, the first group coming from my University's famous downtown campus and then from Guilin's biggest park, 7 Star Park, just a 15 minute walk from our dorms. There we ran into more monkey issues; first we saw a couple monkeys which was neat, but then 2 became 4, 4 became 8, and 8 became ...

... an older brother below me kickin me and nickin my pillow.The 12 hour journey was pretty rubbish the bumpy roads the none stop honking horns and the other passengers talking some funny language made sleep impossible but this did'nt bother Ruth cos she had made a friend . Greg was an English teacher who lived in China he also had a chinese wife who must have been twenty years his younger read what you like into that. Ruth liked Greg so much she decicded on our first day ...

... souvenir stores and stands just to get into town. We stayed only a short while before busing back to Guilin for more strolling and a view of the city's two famous pagodas before heading to sleep. On our final day, we went to another stalagmite/stalactite cave, the Reed Flute Cave, which was quite similar to the other one, albeit larger, and still very enjoyable (not to mention cool). Next destination: A stopover in Chengdu before flying into Tibet

... pretty fast. But I still managed to get some video of it. I think the most interesting part was the herd of Chinese people trying to run along with it. I was planning on trying that too but I didn't really want to get trampled on. So now that I've seen the torch, I don't really think it's going to be necessary to go out of my way to see it again. Its actually not very exciting and it happened really fast.

... across the road, soon followed by the oth**s. We share a local speciality for dinn**, a noodle soup called Pho (pronounced "fur"), at one of the many street sides vendors off**ing it. Refreshed by a good night's sleep, I have breakfast with Maeve, Matilda and Connor, before getting on a local bus to Hanoi. The first thing you notice about Vietnamese roads is the brav**y with which driv**s of all sized vehicles ov**take each oth**. It is common to see trucks playing ...