Sorry for the delay in updating! Busy busy week!

Well it can certainly be said that Liam's assumption of 'oh, we won't spend much in Yangshuo' was certainly misguided - we've spent the most money here so far!

Yesterday we woke up on the train, in the knowledge that we'd have another good few hours before we were on solid ground. The 24 hour train ride had seemed daunting, particularly as when we walked on, we smelt the air and labelled it 'funky.' Everything was damp, the windows wouldn't open, and en route, the fact that we were being overtaken by lorries was not optimistic! However, not to be put off, we spent the evening turning everyone's name backwards - 'Mullac,' 'Obob', 'Nohj' and 'Haras' were particularly amusing, and keeping up with our diaries. We played loads of card games and slept loads too - Bobo even got into a 'your-mum' fight; a serious fight with a local who thought we were too loud (pah!) and he even threatened to start throwing shoes!

This morning Claire had a bit of a headache, so discovered the wonders of Tiger Balm courtesy of Christina (it's seriously amazing stuff) and Bobo decided to try out some Chinese therapy, which involved squeezing the skin between your eyebrows really hard. Apparently, in China, if the skin turns red, you have a headache, but we reckon it's just because she bruised it.... meaning Claire now has an attractive red mark right in the middle of her face. Her headache's gone mind, but it was 2 days ago mind.

We FINALLY arrived in Guilin at about 6pm - 25 hours later, and immediately hopped on a local bus to Yangshuo, about an hour and a half later. Everyone was properly knackered, but we plugged on anyway, and amused ourselves with the horrific driving in the rural areas (it gets worse, and more risky, the further south you go in China). At about half 9, having showered, dumped our luggage and generally woken up a bit, we wandered into the town centre for some food. Yangshuo is a small town (in Chinese standards anyway, probably as large as Leicester), which has been highly 'westernised' to cater for the backpacker demographic. It's full of bars and restaurants and happy hour clubs - yes please - but the souvenir buying is so much more relaxed and less pressurised than in Beijing, which is also nice. We went to a restaurant to MC Blues for some din dins, where Liam was tempted to order some stir fry dog, and Claire said she'd never talk to him ever again if he did. There was a rather interesting choice by John of 'fried fish with beansprouts' which actually turned out to be a whole fish, having not been gutted, slapped on a plate and covered with red sauce. NICE!