Waiting for the sun to come out....

After leaving the huge thunderstorm behind in Xian we made our way by train to Luoyang. We were lucky enough to actually have seats for the 5 hour journey, not like all the people perched in the aisles.
We stayed at this weird low budget hotel where we got a suite, not just a tiny room. Very bizarre, mind you it hadn't been cleaned in a while, oh well.

We met a British/Chinese guy teaching in Hong Kong and headed off to Shaolin Temple (home of Kung Fu). We were on a bus from our Hotel that stopped at a whole heap of unexplained places (shops, temples etc that of course require more money/kickbacks for the guide - welcome to China). The Songyang Academy views of the surrounding mountains. There was a tree that is supposed to be 4500 years old though ooohhhh.

The Shaolin Temple itself is surrounded by lots of knock-off kung fu schools. The demonstration for the tourists was impressive, but left us wanting for more tricks. Simon was itching to go up on stage when they asked for volunteers, but proably just as well missed out as we laughed at the poor suckers trying to replicate the complicated animal-inspired moves.
As we left the Temple area we saw entire fields full of kids practising their drills all moving as one.

We took off to Longmen Grotto on another typically overcast/polluted Chinese day. We were surpised at the magnitude of the caves - over 100,000 images and statues carved in the rockface for well over a kilometre. It was really sad to see the damage that had been done; many of the faces had been chiseled off - despite the large sign at the entrance saying the Communist Government had been protecting them since the 1950s... Yeah right.

From Luoyang we took a bus to ZhengZhou. Our 1.5 hour trip turned into 3 hours + and we were still stuck in traffic! We made a mad dash in a taxi to the airport only to find our flight had been delayed 3 hours. hehe

Guilin was a lot bigger and more touristy than we expected; lots of nightclubs and fancy restaurants which was a shock after the 5 yuan (US 60 cent) noodles we'd been ploughing through in Luoyang. We took a tour to the famed Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces, which was one of the major reasons we came to this area in the first place. We were forced into 'donating' to see a minority group perform a traditional dance and then took photos with them as they let down their hair which was remarkably/ridiculously long - some were up to 1.8 m long! Once the dance was over we were assualted and harrassed constantly by old woman as we waited to take our shuttle bus up the mountain. It put a dampner on the whole experience, particularly when they wouldn't leave you alone after been told five times you didn't want their stuff! Grrrr.
Once we got up the mountain we were surrounded by dense and impenetrable white mist which suddenly made the smaller coloured terraces we'd seen on the way up look spectacular!

Back in Guilin we visited Reed Flute Caves which is a large cave complex filled with intricate limestone formations. It is completely set up for Chinese tour groups (except for the special souvenir shop/entrance for foreigners) and hoardes of them were rushed through the caves before they could have a chance to properly enjoy the surroundings. We took our time but were left in the dark several times when the coloured light timers flicked off, leaving us to wait for the next group to hurry through.

We took a minibus down to Yangshuo which ended up taking a lot longer than we had planned - they always leave on time but then constantly stop to pick-up likely looking passerbys. It was nervewracking at times: overtaking someone who is already overtaking someone else either at blind corners or when another truck is coming towards you! (The buses then toot at the oncoming traffic as if it's their responsibility to get out of the way!)

We stayed in a delightful restored mud-brick farmhouse in a small village outside of bustling Yangshuo. From there we hired bikes and cycled along the dirt paths through the countryside. It was very peaceful and relaxing, but our butts hurt afterwards.:) We biked to Moon Hill (where the old ladies are pretty persistant and followed us right up to the top to sell us water and coke), and along the Liyong River where we could have hired a bamboo raft to float down. We decided to take a bus to XinPing to see the famous Li (Dragon) River and site of the picture on the 20 Yuan note (unfortunately we didn't have one on us to compare:(). We could have made this river trip from Guilin for the 'measly' (!!) price of 450 yuan each (55 bucks) but managed to see the same scenery for a more reasonable (and peaceful) 200 yuan total for a 3 hour bamboo raft ride. We almost timed our run perfectly - on the way up we only saw a couple of tour boats returning to Guilin, but on the way downstream we were inundated by a whole armada of noisy, diesel-belching 'Pleasure Cruises'. We made the right choice!

Jo's still not coping well with the public toilets here and thinks it's horrific that you have to pay to use foul amenities - Simon is even disgusted by some of them. And some hostels don't even provide toilet paper!

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