Sights, sounds and smells of China!

Liz and I flew to Guilin - a city in the south of China - to start our adventure. I hadn't realised it was the first time she had ever left Gregor 'home alone' - but he was with his dad and we had girlie fun to be had! (of course I hugely appreciated her sacrifice)

We were met at the airport by our guide for the four days called Alice who was very sweet and knowledgeable throughout our trip. She had the right balance between giving us info, and leaving us alone to soak up all that was going on around us. She delivered us to the very posh Sheraton hotel, and we headed out to find somewhere to eat. There was a real lack of anywhere with signs in English, or even photos (!) - so we were a bit nervous about finding something edible and/or recognisable. However, we stumbled upon somewhere that served various kinds of fried rice and thought that would do. (There was overkill on rice by the end of the trip, but more about that later)

Next morning we were duly picked up by Alice and our driver (Mr Lo) and joined a cruise down the River Li to Yangshou. It took about three hours, and despite the setting in of mist resembling the haar off the North Sea, the scenery was spectacular. Every corner we went round brought another 'wow' moment. Added to that were the wee villages that we passed, and the folk out fishing with their cormorants and rafts, and the water buffalo grazing at the side of the river. A glimpse of real China we felt.

Arriving at Yangshou, a smaller town than Guilin, we walked to our hotel through the market area - plenty tourist tat for sale, along with real genuine Chinese folk going about their daily business. I found myself gawping at some of the things I saw hanging up for sale in the local takeaways - not quite sure what 'animal' it was - but didn't look too appetising to me! We had a wander round the markets in the afternoon, and we tried out our bargaining skills with locals. Success all round. That evening we went to a sound, dance and light spectacular set on the river against the backdrop of the mountains. What they did technically was superb. Similar kind of thing to the opening of the Beijing Olympics - the Chinese certainly do these kind of events very well.

Next day we went to see Moon Hill, then were driven back to Guilin for more touring round there. We visited a tea growing farm, and took part in a tea drinking ceremony, sampling lots of different types of tea I had never heard of our of tiny wee cups. We went to the 1000 Buddha caves as well - Liz touching the Buddha's foot (!), - along with my prayers - delivered us our first non-rice meal of the trip - a definite 'Hallelujah!' moment.....

Elephant rock was out next stop (not to be confused with the one at Lunan Bay near Montrose) and we stumbled upon some traditional Chinese dancing there - a real youth festival moment. We managed to be persuaded to join in with the finale, a la Generation Game.

The visit to the Reed Flute caves was amazing - apparently a farmer had been out one day looking for Chinese plants for medicines and had just stumbled across the entrance, sometime in the 1940's. It was really well set out and lit up, and each section of rocks was named.

The trip passed quickly, but we packed a lot in to it. This is the first trip I've ever done where the whole thing is organised for you - on reflection, it's not my ideal way to travel, but given the language difficulties we would have encountered without Alice (and the short time we had) - it worked out perfectly :)