We got up early as we had booked ourselves on a Li river cruise up to Langdi, where we were to get the bus back.

They came to collect us for the short ride to the pier and got on a small boat with a lower deck with seating and an upper deck without (unless you paid extra to sit up there, but you could stand)

We pulled out and it was a fairly uninspiring first hour on the boat before the beautiful hills started to come into view and we moved to stand upstairs (after various denied attempts by some snotty security guy)

We stayed up there for hours admiring some beautiful scenery and chatting away. The river curved and twisted through this valley of lush green carst cliffs that jutted up out of the farming landscape.

After about two hours we got a little bored. It was a misty day but still beautiful, but we had thought it only lasted two hours and we'd been gone for four already. We sat downstairs and admired from behind he glass windows whilst relieving our achy legs from standing until we finally got to langdi pier and got our ride home. It was a lovely day and cost us about 140yuan. So glad we didn't do to the much longer trip down from Guilin though, for 400yuan I would have been miffed!

We got back to the hostel and booked to go fishing that evening. We went up to the rooftop bar win an Irish coffee, then had a beer, then it was obvious we weren't going fishing! We changed to the following night, got another beer, and started playing pool!

After a while, a Canadian guy called John came up to the roof, some general hit chat and he started playing pool with us. A nice guy, from the rocky's he was travelling through china into Mongolia and Russia before heading home, we passed the time getting to know each other before Mandy arrived.

Mandy was Chinese, from Macau, who spoke such good English she sounded American. She joined us at the pool table and in conversation, and the beers kept coming.

Steve came up, sat at a bar stool with the loud Finnish guy called Albert who was a stoner. Didn't really get to know him.

Next came Gian and Liam. Both from derby a teacher and accountant respectively, these guys were cool but without any pretension and just got stuck in with the chit chat and pool playing and beer drinking, and liams girlfriend Suzie came to join us too, also a teacher and a great girl. Our group complete, it was turning out to be a lovely evening!

We got talking as always about travels. Gian, Liam and Susie had come from india, we're going through china to Vietnam, Cambodia Indonesia before going to south America. Mandy just doing a little more of China.

We decided to grab some food and Mandy led the way to a recommended restaurant which I don't think anyone particularly cared about, we just wanted booze!

After a meal of green vegetables and rice for me and Jenny, and beer fish for the rest of the gang, we were finally ready to move on.

We walked around for ages before Gian and me decided anywhere would do! We walked into a rasta bar which Steve then turned his nose up at. The rest of us didn't care we just wanted a drink, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at going to bars, we headed for Mojo's a couple of streets down, which also boasted a rooftop terrace.

It started off a bit cagey as we were full and hadn't drank for a while, but we got beers and Gian and I decided to challenge this young lad from kent and a Canadian dude to beer pong!

We brought the beers and we didn't do too bad considering we hadnt played before! The rest of the guys watched and then took over from us as Gian and I along with Jenny and Mandy went to play fooseball (Jenny and I teamed up and lost twice)

Now it was time for Susie and I to challenge at beer pong again. We did good and had a right laugh. Especially with our intimidation mode of crouching down pulling funny faces at the other team and going 'oooooohhhhh' in funny tones everytime they tried to take a shot. We still lost.

More beers and games passed the time and I took a seat at the bar where this crazy drunk Chinese barmaid tried to make us play a game purely designed to make us part with our cash. The details were hazy and she seemed to be the one drinking most of the time. There were three glasses, if you rolled a 7 you had to fill them up, and 8 meant you drank half of all glasses and a 9 meant you drank everything. Sue almost three up he fifth time she had to drink them all but she was loud sweary and fun.

Time to go home, we paused for photos and stumbled back to the hostel. It was about 3am and it had been a good night!