Geo: 18.2458, 109.478Our last day in the country, we very much enjoyed our time in Yangshuo, one area we would like to come back to. There is nothing wrong with Beijing, Shanghai and Xian but once you have seen the sights then there is less reason to go back. The area we have been in (pointy mountains, villages, slow way of life) would be worth spending a lot longer in.On the way to the airport we visited some limestone caves, very large and spectacularly lit, but nothing very special, and then our driver took us to what the hotel billed as a stone village. Actually it was a group of houses about 300 years old which have not been restored, there was lots of woodworm and dodgy floorboards but it was great, dare I say, to ... read more

Geo: 24.7709, 110.487Southern China has been experiencing some nasty weather over the past few days, Hong Kong airport closed for a few hours yesterday and there has been lots of heavy rain. So it says on the news, if it is true then we have been lucky, yes there have been some big thunderstorms the last two nights and this morning it was misty, overcast and looked like rain. To elderly Brits like ourselves this seems like normal weather so undeterred we borrowed bikes from the hotel and set off across the paddy fields. The pointy mountains described yesterday poke out of very flat valleys which are ideal for cycling, the local authorities have realised that foreign tourists like getting out on bikes, it makes them feel they are experiencing Chinese culture (whilst the Chinese zoom ... read more

Geo: 25.2581, 110.271"Guilin is in the subtropical zone, which is warm, humid and full of rain" So says the Sheraton Hotel guide for visitors and we cannot argue, it is certainly warm, humid and full of rain in fact it was pissing down at 8am this morning. Fortunately we we had nothing special planned for today so we had stroll round the town and a short boat trip between showers.It is Sunday so there are more day trippers about although we are not too sure about the working arrangements of most Chinese as everything is open seven days a week (apart from the Forbidden City) and there did not seem to be a very well defined rush hour in either Beijing or Shanghai on any day of the week.But on a Sunday there are more couples ... read more

Geo: 31.2405, 121.465One of the features of long holidays is that you cannot bring enough clothes or even underwear to last the duration so you have to have "wash days" planned in the schedule. Either two days in a hotel which has a reliable laundry service or a reasonable amount of space in the bathroom in which to do the washing. Apart from being a bit mean I am also adverse to hotel laundries after a three month stint in the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens many years ago. The laundry there boiled everything and then ironed it to within an inch of it's life. It took years to get the creases out of my Levi's and all my shirts shrank two sizes, so now we try to do it ourselves. This didn't work in Xian, ... read more

Geo: 31.1547, 120.723So far the weather has been perfect, no rain in Warsaw and Moscow, brilliant sunshine in Siberia, overcast but warm and dry in Beijing, Xian and Shanghai. Today was our first rest day with nothing planned and it rained so nothing lost either.The leaflet of Tongli where we are staying describes the town as;"Tongli is small but the lane is very circuitous, deep and quiet. The geography of cultural and historical relics also complicated, in order to make tourists who visit here for the first time enjoy themselves".We have avoided making fun of the rather odd translations on signs as we are extremely grateful for all the effort made to make foreigners like us feel welcome, but the above was on a leaflet given to hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, you would ... read more