Zplashes Resort Wujiang

Despite the heat, we were all charged up for a 20 km trip to the local must-see tourist destination, Moon Mountain and the Water Caves. With our perky Chinese guide, Sophie to show us the way, we pedalled our rentals (at 10 RMB per day - about $1.50) through scenic valleys, across ...

... to see on the recommendation of Hong Kong friends, a day trip to Long Ji rice terraces and villages - and bus tickets back to Shenzhen. ["Tickets" is not quite the right word here. Most of these activities, including the bus trip, did not involve any actual exchange of tickets.] The price, though supposedly discounted after a lot of negotiation was still higher than I would have liked to pay, but these were all activities we thought we should do as we had missed them on our ...

Weather here same as Guilin (cloudy/rainy) but colder. Got lost again on arrival which is the norm so instead of telling more boring stories about me getting lost just assume that when I arrive somewhere I spend about an hour trying to figure out where I am and am at my wits end by the time I reach my destination. First night I went out and met a bunch of friendly Chinese people and ultimately ended up with a group of about 5 Chinese guys that were attempting to ...

... long to come hassle me and offer bamboo rafting and I had to repeatedly remind them that I was "biking today" and not rafting. My offroad experience lasted for no more than a minute when the supposed off road trail was over taken by the bush and the only way to get past was with a machete, which I did not have.

... the views took our breath away (or was it the high altitude sickness?). The town is under a heavy development like many Chinese cities and in few years anything that was from the old times will be vanished like **** in the wind. I just read that China will be the most visited country by tourists by the year 2020. Go there before its too late. Already now we right at the limit.. The following day we headed back to Guilin to catch a transport to the Vietnam border...

... side of the Li River. As well as this unique karst topography, the city has some nice parks and some impressive underground limestone caves replete with sound and light show. Unfortunately, it also possesses one of the most depressing zoos I have ever witnessed and by China's standards this is really saying something. We are talking monkeys dressed as people and kept in tiny prison cells, "friendly" (read: massively ...

... of a huge U shaped valley and around the middle of a large peak at its head. Dotted around the valley floor and part way up its steeply sloping sides we could see hundereds of flickering orange lights. They were created by farmers burning chaff and debris left from the recent harvest. As night fell the train continued to hug the side of the valley for some 30 minutes or more providing us with a magnificent and continually changing vista more reminiscent of an arial view than ...

... day... so I used the time to sleep long and proofread my writing job. On arrival in Guilin, I hopped on the bus to Yangshuo, one hour south, which lies in the middle of China's most typically Chinese landscape. Look at any old bit of kitschy Chinese pottery and you'll see a farmer with a funny hat holding a bamboo pole and standing in a boat in a river, surrounded by rounded, tall mountains sticking up from the otherwise flat landscape. That's what Yangshuo is all about ...

... and the man came up to our room to fix it! Big mistake...he just broke it even more so it wouldn't flush at all. So after an hour or so of building himself up, guy had to go relieve himself in the squat loo in reception! Anyway, now we've checked out of the hotel and Guy, surprise surprise, needs to go again! So he went to try and brave the loos in this net cafe, but has just come back unrelieved and rather traumatised at having trodden in someone elses poo ...

... Absolutely nobody spoke any english and all the signs were in chinese (I know I know, we're in China so you'd kinda expect that!)....then very luckilly two american girls came along and saved us! They were going to the same place and told us that we had to get a local bus to a bigger bus station, which as it turned out was in the back of a random building anyway, we'd never have found it without them (they spoke chinese)! We were ...