Hey everybody!!! Wow, what a full on fab time I'm having! I'm doing soooo much fun stuff and having a great time still! Ok so, lets see if I can back track on my days. So after the trip to Xian....oh wait, I don't think I wrote about how Xian has been one of my fav places! The street food there was super and there was this one street that was just fab. It was like old style China, really reminded me of India. So much colour, so many people, such a small street with lots of food stalls and little shop stalls! Was the best!!!!

Ok so after that we caught a 23hour train to Shanghai! The train journey wasn't to bad really, considering! The toilets I'm now getting used to but seriously I will not complain about british rail toilets ever again!!!! The train toilets are still holes, its crazy! I'll put up a picture when I get a chance. So played lots of cards on the train journey and just chatted with my fellow travellers. Feels like me and this group have been together for ages but It's been like 2 weeks today! Got to Shaghai and it was soooo foggy! Could hardly see the high rise buildings coz of the smog! It also started raining so I put my pink poncho to good use, ha ha-in photos it looks like I'm wearing pink tinfoil....which incidentally I'd buy if it was out there! ha ha! It continued to rain all day but it was pretty cool still. Shanghai is ok, I didn't like it that much. It's more expensive then Beijing can you believe! Anyhows, the Shanghai main streets are all high rise and bright lights and massive glowing signs, and then when you walk to the side streets of Shanghai its like your in a totally different place, bamboo scafolding, people hanging up all their clothes to dry onthe phone lines outside in the street, hee hee-including pants! Went on a river cruise to see all the famous lights of Shanghai which was pretty super.

Then coupla days later we left Shanghai for another overnight train to Yongshou, where we stayed at the Fawlty Towers hotel, ha ha! Yangshou was amazing, so beautiful! I did loads there, I had a Kung fu lesson in the local park from Master Yang, everybody was Kung fu fighting, and I was totally fast as lightening! ha ha! It was soooo fun! So watch out people, I'll Kung Fu you!! I also had a Tai Chi lesson in the local park. The bestest thing I did in Youngshou was kayake in the Li river! It was amazing!!!! Several hours just me and some of my friends on the Li river. The picture i've got up for this entry is the Li river and seriously, thats what the view was like all the time! It was so quite as it was just us on the river, every now and then we'd see local people washing their clothes in the river or a few ducks swimming by. It was sooooo cool! At some points the mountains were so high that if we shouted our echo was soooo clear!

After this we moved further into the heart of China and went to stay in little wooden hut type hotel called the 'outside inn'. There was nothing around except grass land and mountains and a few other 'houses' where the locals lived. there were chickens roaming around freely and a pig sty. There were big streams around where instead of taking the dog for a walk as we do back home, the locals would take their buffolo's for a walk and a wash in the stream! ha ha! crazy to see! We walked up to a massive lake and jumped straight in! Again we were just surrounded by green lans, rice fields, and mountains, amazing! The next day we went on a 35k bike ride in the pouring rain! It rained non-stop and even my gorgeous pink poncho couldn't protect me! I was soaked all the way through! We biked around the rice fields and through streams and through muddy ways and gravel paths. Was super fun but I'm still aching from it now! ow, haven't riden a bike since I was a kid!! We rode to a samll villiage and had lunch at a farmers house. The food was amazing! I'm still loving the food, its so yummy!

xx