Still adjusting to being solo again, I was hoping that Shanghai would sweep me up and fill my days with activities. Touching down on the runway apparently only milliseconds after still flying over row upon row of lawn-topped apartment blocks helped create a first impression of great population density, which was only reinforced by the wide busy streets and plentiful skyscrapers. Further evidence came in the cost of my hostel accommodation - for more than I'd paid anywhere else in mainland China, I had a windowless cell furnished with a bed whose polyester "linen" meant that slipping into bed had an unexpectedly literal aspect. A strange smell pervaded the whole establishment - I was unsure if it was mould or something drifting up from the wet market close by. Shanghai is undergoing a renaissance which should ... read more

With our ultimate destination next being Kunming, we had 2 routes to get there - either through Sanjiang and Liuzhou, or through Kaili. For various reasons, Sanjiang was our preferred waypoint but, at 9:30AM when neither the 7:30AM nor 8:30AM buses to Sanjiang had come through (supposedly the only morning options), we felt forced to change our plans. Buses to Congjiang and Kaili took up the rest of the day, with uncomfortable hours of traditional music on the DVD player pitched somewhere in the screeching range. The next day we boarded a sleeper train for Kunming and, 14 hours later, were back in a city we'd first visited 5 months ago.... read more

Our journey to Sanjiang was noteworthy due to the state of maximal overcrowdedness achieved by the bus to Longsheng, and then due to the bus from Longsheng having aircon (a local bus with aircon!!!) Sanjiang is a fairly charmless town, but at least possessed amenities we hadn't had in recent days. It's the capital of the Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, the Dong being another Chinese minority tribe. One feature of all Dong settlements is one or more drum towers, originally used as lookout points - the drums inside would be beaten to alert the villagers to some impending peril. Nowadays the space beneath them is used as a meeting place. Sanjiang possesses the largest one in the region at 47m high but apart from that there is little in the way of Dong heritage - for ... read more

In a bid to escape the hordes and the hotel prices of Yangshuo, we decamped upstream to Xingping, whose own karst-surrounded stretch of the Li River is so renowned that it features on the back of the 20 yuan note. Rooms were a little less astronomically priced here, but the quality was lower and it also turned out to be an unsuitable base. Misty karst scenery in this region is a mainstay of Chinese landscape painting, and the received wisdom is that viewing the limestone peaks is best done from the water. It would be hard to overstate the popularity of this activity. Large tour boats ply the Guilin-to-Yangshuo-and-back route every couple of minutes with umpteen smaller craft (predominantly motorised bamboo rafts with seating for up to 5 people) buzzing around them. The parade of vessels ... read more

Entering China from Macau was a lot less hassle than entering from Vietnam had been, and my RG was unmolested by customs. Our intended destination was Yangshuo, meaning we had to bus it to Guangzhou first and then change. Unfortunately we arrived in Guangzhou too late for anything other than a sleeper bus connection - since Chinese sleeper bus berths were apparently designed for hobbits, we decided to stay the night then catch an early bus. Guangzhou was sprawling, crowded, and polluted. There were plenty of foreigners floating around, including a surprising number of black people - more than I've seen since I left New York. Even so, it was strange to rediscover our novelty value, with Chinese adults and children alike all giving us a second glance. The following morning we were on a bus ... read more