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After breakfast Sam's dad gave us a lift to the bus station and Sam arranged tickets for me and Steve to go white water rafting. I was soooo excited I couldn't sit still. The bus took us out of town and up into the hills. The road turned into a track as it wound higher and higher and got thinner and thinner. I always think of my mum on the hair raising journeys. Not because I'm s***ting myself and need my mummy but because she always over reacts on journeys, if she was there she would be screaming every time we met another vehicle and had to edge over and you could just see a great big drop. Actually she would have just got off or made it turn back. It took us a while to figure out what we needed to do when we got there. As always there was a lot of procedures, queuing up, getting flip flops, changing, waiting for a bus blah blah blah. Eventually an hour later another bus took us to the top. White water rafting turned out to be sitting in a blow up Dinghy and holding on while the rapids took you down the hill. It looked lame and I'm sure it sounds it, but it was actually amazing. The fact that you didn't have ores made it even better. You just trusted yourself at the mercy of the water. There were huge drops where it was so hard not to full out. And there were huge rocks which every now and again we would hit but luckily we were always cushioned by the Dinghy. Just in case you weren't scared enough along the way you could see the deflated dinghies that had hit the rocks and every now and again a helmet would bob pass. We were thrown all over the place, thankfully though our dinghy didn't rip but I think I ripped myself a new a******* when the dinghy hit a huge rock and one cheek slipped but the other one stayed planted. Definitely the most fun I've had for a long time. When we finally got to the bottom about an hour and half later I was knackered from all the holding on and adrenalin.
After we went back into town and bumped into Rikki and Alex, two of the group we had met in Beijing. We decided to check out Monkey Janes a legendary bar in Yangshuo. Its probably a bit too cool for me tbh, you could work behind the bar for three hours for a free drink and dinner or paint one of their hostel rooms and stay in it for free if you had the urge to paint and enjoyed the smell of paint while you sleep i guess. It was on a rooftop and had an amazing view and was full of young backpackers out for a good time and I was one of them. ( Not really sure i can get away with calling myself young or a backpacker but it's my blog so I will.) Im not sure if I've mentioned Alex the French guy with the ponytail but no matter what you are doing his been there and done it better, so it was no surprise when he announced that he was great at beer pong - a drinking game played with ping pong balls on a long table involving getting the ball into the other players cup and making them drink - it's not as dull as I've made it sound. Anyway we played these Belgians that had been there all week and had t shirts saying beer pong champs. Turns out I have a hidden talent and we thrashed them. Rikki had been saying that she wouldn't play as the cups and ping pong balls were dirty especially as they kept landing on the floor. Eventually we peer pressured Alex and Rikki into playing me and Steve and i thrashed them as well. I say I - Steve was there (I won't comment on his beer pong skills but I think sticky Vicky could have done better with her eyes closed) Finally a sport I can play - first thing I'm going to do in my new house is install a beer pong table. We got talking to everyone and met a group of girls who we arranged to go out with the next night. And some Chinese girls joined us to practice there English. It turned out all the Chinese girls names had a meaning like little moon or some s***. So I explained that Steve's name meant ugly in English and Gavin meant sexy, then they wrote it in their work books and everyone cracked up and said i was out of order - no one bothered to correct them though. So one drink led to another and before we knew it we found ourselves in a pole dancing club where two girls in leather bikinis worked their magic. I got up on the stage and was joined by a very drunk Chinese girl who was way to gropy and clingy. Next thing I know she fell off the stage big style into this tall table knocking it over along with at least 6 drinks and taking out a couple of people ( this is not an exaggeration - it was a real car crash moment) I got down but Steve and Alex hadn't seen and got up. Within seconds Alex was topless and writhing and gyrating around the pole. I hate to say it but he was good. Anyway in England this would be a typical night out. But I should explain that in china there not really drinkers or dancers and generally just sit in bars chatting or doing KTV. I felt so uncomfortable the whole club was just staring at us. Especially the pole dancers who stood there with their arms crossed giving us evils, they seemed really pissed off that Alex was on their pole. But for some reason the Chinese people treat us like we are celebrities. I try not to play up to it as tempting as it is. Steve however has no such qualms and was happy to pose for pictures even signing a few autographs which then drew a crowd. Mind you I didn't object to the constant supply of free drinks and fags they, wouldn't let you finish before they gave you another. I had heard it was rude to not accept things when offered so technically it wasn't my fault when we staggered home in the early hours unable to unlock the front door until Sam let us in. "English today hung over tomorrow" Sam said this a lot during our stay!
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Claire Sounds great, especially the white water rafting and autograph signing, hope you claimed your beer pong champ tshirt !