Hello from Yangshuo (again!)

Can't seem to budge from this place because it has everything we need while we pass the time waiting for Barry and Nok to arrive in Chengdu next week.

We've now officially left the rainy season behind and are in a heat wave that seems to be sweeping China right now.The whole country is sweltering in hotter than normal temperatures and the news reports say that in the southern city of Guangzhou the National Grid is at its limits - so instead of turning off aircon units, shops are advised to switch off the lights!!!

Here in Yangshuo it's an uncomfortable 32 most days with 70% humidity (that's the uncomfortable bit!) however, you will be pleased to know that my socks now dry in only one day instead of the 48hrs it took when we arrived here.It's the small things that matter….

We've had great fun over the last week - the highlights being a bike ride out into the countryside and a boat excursion that went all wrong and ended up being superb because of it.

The bike ride took us out on the back roads to the village of Fuli via first the back road, then after getting a bit lost, on the main road, crossing the river by local ferry then back to Yangshuo on the original back road that we couldn't find on the way out of town.

The countryside around Fuli is like stepping back in time.The villages along the way are really basic which is quite a contrast to modern Yangshuo.I really liked the simplicity of life in the countryside here - little clusters of mud brick houses with crumbling walls and tiled roofs - kids running around barefoot, old men sitting under the shade of the trees chatting away.Fuli itself is a town where paper fans are made and you could see them all out drying in the sun and also if you peeked inside doorways we could see them being painted by hand.

Being back on bikes again was a real treat (although maybe not so much for Brian who had a bike way too small for him - and it was pink like a Barbie bike!!).The roads got quite rough at one stage as the recent rains had washed the gravel surface away to leave a path of giant potholes.The big karst rock formations that surround this area were spectacular up close - cycling the narrow road between the rocks and the Li River was a real treat.

Our next outing we took a bus for 1 hr to the town of Yangdi.From here it was our intention to take a 1.5hr bamboo boat ride to the town of XingPing and then bus back to Yangshuo.

It all went to plan until we got on the boat at Yangdi.Here the boat driver rung the CITS (travel office) to find an English speaker so that the travel office could tell us that the Government had stopped all traffic on the river at XingPing so our boat could not go there until after 12noon as there was some "Government Official" on the river.Ok, we said, sure we can wait a couple of hours on this boat.To cut a long story short, the Govt didn't open the river that day, we never made it to XingPing, so we ended up spending 5 hrs with our boatman (Mr Lu) who did not have one word of English (and we only have 6 words of Chinese).He was so good to us - he took us up and down the river for a few hours, took us to his village (which has an 800 year old history) to meet his family - fed us lunch, took us up the hill to show us the natural spring that supplies his village with water.

The highlight of the whole day (despite the drop dead gorgeous scenery) was meeting Mr Lu's family.To get inside a rural Chinese house was so interesting and to sit with the family and eat corn and nectarines and sponge cake was awesome.I just loved the opportunity to see family life and they were so nice to us.The neighbours turned up to see us too and bought their little two year old boy - what a cracking little fellow he was - Brian played ball with the little one which went swimmingly until they lost the ball under the bed and had to get a big tree branch from outside to rescue the ball.Mr Lu has three children - two girls- one aged 15 (this one spoke a little English) and 10 then a boy aged 8.

So, at the end of a lovely day on the river with Mr Lu, he dropped us back in Yangdi where we took the bus back to Yangshuo.

We are here in Yangshuo until next Tuesday when we fly to Chengdu to extend our Chinese visas and meet up with Barry and Nok (on the Sunday) for the trip up to the Tibetan Plateau.While in Chengdu we have to buy a tent and sleeping bags for the expedition so there is a bit to organise.

Hope you are all well.Sending you all our love (and some of our spare sunshine!)

Kerry and Brian

xx