Ok a quick one i'm afraid but i'll hopefully expand at a later date!

We got stuck in Huai Hua for an extra day because unfortunately my alarm clock ran out of battery sometime during the night (it was after 2.30am as we were disturbed then by a chinese women banging on our door- we thought she was a prostitute so shouted "don't want" at her but she wouldn't leave until i opened the door. Thankfully it was just a women at the wrong door not a prostitute!) meaning we missed our 6am train as we didn't wake up til 8am. Unfortunately that is the only train a day to Guilin and we could only get renewed Hard Seat tickets not Sleep so we wasted another day in rubbishy Huai Hua but ne'er mind we got to Guilin eventually.

Arriving in Guilin we tried to book into a hostel but it was full so a chinese guy who spoke english led us to a cheap hotel and we haggeled down the price and used his ID card to get it cheaper. The next day we managed to get into the backpackers hostel which was a really nice hostel but lacked a pool table (which i'm slowly improving at!). Guilin is  nice city dotted everywhere with Karst peaks and there are TONS of foreigners which is still seriously weird for Suse and I! Lots of western places to eat as well so we munched our way through a few paninis and pizza's which were pretty delicious!!!

While in Guilin and waiting for Brad, Hannah, Sophie and Sam to arrive from Kunming we visited the Solitary peak park which was swarming with Chinese tourists making it a little over crowded but it afforded fantastic views over Guilin (once you had huffed and puffed up the peak in the heat and humidity. I was almost overtaken by a granny at one stage but thankfully she had to stop half way up while i -just- made it too the top!).

The other 4 arrived the next day and the sun finally started to shine as the day before it had rained-AGAIN! We met them and went to another park in Guilin to see a cave. We had to have a tour through the cave which was ok but i wanted to go slightly slower but they would always turn the lights out leaving me in the dark!

erm...the rest of Guilin oh Suse, Sam, Brad n i went for a massage. I thought it would be a massage like i've had from my friend, Susan's, mum which used oils and was sooo relaxing and lovely. Ha ha. This turned out to be a medicinal massage meaning they cracked your bones, dug their fingers and elbows into you "knots" to "relax" them and basically left you in absolute agony. Sam was the only who enjoyed it. It was a full body massage and the back part was definitely the worse as when they dug in their fingers or elbows you couldn't help tensing...which of course meant they spent AGESS trying to relax you...which was just not going to happen!!! Needless to say we hurt for quite a few days afterwards!

After a couple of days in Guilin we headed to the nearby town of Yangshuo...basically a backpackers community now with practically more foreigners than chinese but we had a fab time there! We went Mopeding, swimming (drowning- another time), kayaking, caving and mud bathing (the last 2 for free!) and generally chilled out at the bars n stuff because it was SOOOOOO HOT AND HUMID! I'll expand a little more on this later but it was great fun.

Brad and i are now in Shang hai for a few days and it is a lot cooler if pretty muggy here. We hope to go to the highest bar (but only for one drink as Blair says its EXPENSIVE!) and just look around. We went up and down lifts today in various tall scrapers trying to get a good look over Shang Hai but it was rather cloudy so no go really! We've also had one of the most expensive taxi rides in history at 106Y from the train station to our hostel (only around 10 quid but i'm used to paying 4Y or 40pence!) but we're having fun all the same!

Only 2 weeks today till i come home! YIKES!!! Quite scared actually! I'm already craving chinese food as i've been eating a lot of western on this holiday...beef noodles just taste better right now!