We were supposed to be in Yangshuo, Guanxi province, for only 2 nights but we are leaving tomorrow after spending 5 days here, it really is an amazing place. It is right in amongst China’s karst scenery (huge big green hills which just go straight up and down) and is such a good place to come and chill out and ride a bike, eat some brilliant (and dirt cheap) food, and meet some of the nicest people on the planet.

We went on a trip down the Li river yesterday on a bamboo boat and visited the Budda Water Cave. I was supposed to be taking a mixture of boat and bicycle between the various sites but when I turned up at the meeting place , I alone was the tour group and my “guide” was a 17 year old boy on a motorbike who didnt speak a word of English! Although Sarah and Kim went the day before (I was ill) and they said this is pretty much what it consisted of and they had a brilliant time (they had 2 young men and one of them was my guide). So I hopped on the back of his motorbike and zipped past all the walking and cycling tourists down to the river. While we were on the bamboo boat he chatted away in Chinese and we managed to establish that he “likes foreign girls"…. great! Everytime I managed to communicate somthing in Chinese to him he got so excited and hugged me like a little boy would … think he just liked showing off to his friends that he had a foriegn girl clutching onto him on the back of his motobike!

At the Buddha Water Cave I was handed over to another young man (although he was a proper tour guide and spoke English, so my situation was gradually improving) and he showed me around this cave which had natural formations which the Chinese, a long time ago had decided looked like Buddha , there was a slight resemblence if you used your imagnation. He shone his torch through this little crack in the wall and said, “you want to go through there? Its quite small but many man with fat belly go through there ok. I get you at other side.” I thought, what the hell, it might be fun and started wriggling through the hole, which was longer and lower than I expected. By the time I was lying flat out on my belly, on jagged stones, not able move any part of my body more than a foot and a half up the way, I realised that no fat man ever came out of that hole alive. I managed to get my head a bit futher out, and the guide had his flashlight pointing in my eyes as he took pictures of me, and I’m just like …. help! “No hurry” he kept telling me ….. 10 mins later I was out. Covered in mud, clay and bruises but at least I’ve got some funny pictures to look back on!

I’ve been finding eating so much healthier here. A normal breakfast, made by Tao (Hostel manager) usually consists of rice noodle, cooked lettuce or cabbage, little bits of pork and some Chilli sauce which I usually leave as it is sooo hot. But its really nice. Dinner, at Wei’s house, Tao’s friend who also owns a hostel and speaks really good English and helps his friend out becuse he’s just starting out, was … a kind of hot pot affair. We all sat around a huge Wok on tiny little chairs and picked what we wanted out of the food cooking in the wok.

We arrived (slightly worse for wear) in Yangshuo this morning after our 13 hour bus trip! Luckily the hostel I booked online is great, the guy is so friendly and speaks English. We also have hot water and comfy beds.

We’ve organised a tour tomorrow of the surrounding hills (which are like huge molehills) by a mixture of bicycle and boat. We are hiring a tandem. The scenery here is just amazing and its absolutely freezing too.

This Fiona’s version of our holiday on Hainan Island and visiting Shenzen and Hong Kong.

After a very surreal week, I have finally landed in Hong Kong. The ‘free holiday’ turned out to be a bus trip with a bunch of old chinese people….. oooh the banter! Hainan island seems to be the Chinese equilvalent of Scunthorpe, and is reserved for Chinese tourists, and their cameras. We didn’t speak to another foreigner for 5 days! We spent 5 days on a bus, stopping roughly every half hour to look round a tourist sight; ‘cultural’ villiages, gardens, mountains, big stones, and on the one day Sophie and I wimped out and went to the beach, we missed a trip to the ‘end of the earth’…. gutted! All the places we went to see were really manufactured and, although interesting, it just felt a bit weird being in them. Most of the time we didn’t have a clue what we were looking at ‘though, as most of the information was in Chinese. We hotel hopped, and they were all pretty shabby, but the most memorable was one called caac…. and caac it was!

The people we were with on the trip didn’t speak any English, so every now and again (usually at dinner time when we were with our crew…. the oldest peeps in the group) they would start chatting away to us in Chinese. Now as we all know my Chinese is laughable so, as the confused look set in on my face and I uttered the words ‘ting bu dong’ (I don’t understand), the whole table would errupt into fits of giggles and they would spend the rest of the meal talking and pointing at us. That wasn’t much fun ….

As I mentioned, Hainan island is a massive tourist destination, and loads of people go there to relax and enjoy the sun. In order to do this, they have to wear the ‘Hainan outfit’. This consits of a crazy Hawaiian style shirt with matching shorts and hat. This outfit comes in an array of luminous colours, and is usually tastefully patterned with cartoon animals. Look out Paris, this is gonna be the next big fashion craze … I swear!

Last night we flew into Shenzhen, after finally ditching the group. We stayed there overnight and then crossed the border into Hong Kong this morning. Sent most of the day getting into the city centre and finding accomodaton, and we kind of accidentally on purpose ended up staying in the same hostel as the other girls ….. although we haven’t seen them yet, the manager assures us that two Scottish girls are already there.

Gonna be in Hong Kong for about a week, Bex arrives on Monday which will be ace, we’ll spend a couple of days sorting visas and then off we go to Vietnam! The city is cracking, totally different to the other parts of China I’ve been, and it has all of these British touches …. feels like home!

We made it to Hong Kong and it is absolutly amazing! They even have double decker buses here! The taxi drivers speak English, they drive on the left side of the road and I’m eating a baked potato! Sarah and Kim just arrived today as well from Beijing and we had no way to contact each
other cos neither of our sims work but it turns out we arrived at the same block of Hostels as them and we got a room right next to them …. still havent found them yet.

Hainan Island was a totally Chinese experience, hilarious! We had to get up at 6am every morning and spend the whole day traipsing ’round these tourist sites which had obviously been set up just for these tour groups as there were hundreds of them. Most of the traffic on the roads consisted of tour buses! Eating rice three times a day wasn’t much fun either but we managed to escape the group for one day and spent the day on a gorgeous quiet beach, apart from these two chinese guys, one of whom wanted me to help him learn English and so sat there the whole time asking me to say this word, read that word ….. but he was quite sweet.