Snow Lion Resort Yangshuo

... how many more steps we can fit into this trip before our knees completely give up on us?????

After the climb and cycle ride it was time for birthday cake! Yangshuo is renowned for its cheesecake so coffee and a slice of cheesecake over emails it was for us – yum.

Birthday dinner after the light show was pizza and beer

2nd December 2009

Today was the big adventure day – we decided to cycle out to Dragon Bridge on the Yu Long River ...

... exchange program. So I went over and talked about that and about the hopes to convert the old school into a cultural exchange center with the help of the government. They were all excited about it. They to are in an old school and much of what they have are more like hand me downs from other schools. All the students who go there live on campus. Most are from the many small villages around Yangshuo. As far as schools go in Yangshuo ...

... pretty cramped but you get a table and TV per compartment. As we didn't leave til 7pm we spent much of the time sleeping before arriving in Guilin at 8am. Every now and then the police get onto the trains at a stop and check everything; they have people doing the most bizarre jobs ever on the trains; one girl spent the entire journey checking our luggage was correctly on the racks and pushing any that was a slight mm off the racks back on. Another person ...

18th SEPTEMBER

Guilin, the Chinese tourist's "dream" was a big disappointment and we grabbed a coach which sped away into the sunset - otherwise known as Yangshuo.

As mentioned before, we have rarely seen western tourists in China. One or two on the Great Wall and the Terracotta warriors, but often they were the same people! It was in Yangshuo where this all changed. If Guilin is China's premier destination for the Chinese, then Yangshuo is the premier destination ...

... 8230;…̷ 0;…….

Abbey: CONGRATULATIONS hon. I can’t wait to see you hear all about everything and have lovely dinner and drinks. Hope it was as fantastically special as you wished for. Details soon. Thanks for the messages too hon, it’s great to hear from you. Loads of love xxx

Katie Lant/Hewitt: Congratulations hon, glad you got my text. Hope everything is going ok and the new addition is well and ...

... fact it was going to be really steep up-hill, and why exactly, did I need to put myself through that! It was one hell of a hike up, the fact all the steps were really slippy, didn't really help the situation. There was an impressive view on top, but we didn't have long to appreciate it as it started raining heavily almost as soon as we got up there, meaning I didn't really get many photos up there. It was too misty for them to come out. We made our way back down the precarious path ...

... rafts were fantastically engineered to glide through the water with the front curving upward. The driver pushed us along with their large bamboo poles, not dissimilar to a Venetian gondola. It began to sprinkle and the mists swirled around the caps of the mountains, this was a world away from our troubles back home. The rafts made dramatic dives down mini waterfalls which made us laugh and scream all captured on camera by locals who were waiting on rafted ...

... We again started with a bit of a dim sum feast. Our driver, Mr. Deng, had some pigs blood for breakfast, but none of us chose to join him. I wonder why... On the way out of the hotel we passed a chinese wedding. I snapped a few pictures...of course I can't get them uploaded now. Frustrating. Our way out of the city was rolling along the West River, a tributary of the Ju River, the third longest river in China. (I am not exactly ...