Travelogue :  Amber's Southeast Asia travels

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Im here in China!!! and i love it! Had some problems with the visa as china have tightened their issue of visas but although i had to change plans it has worked out for the best as i now have over three weeks in china and have been able to book a tour in Yunnan province up to Lijiang and dali...this is my Tibet substitute. So firtly i arrived in Guilin where i have been for the last four days and i leave tonight. I was very lucky with my hostel firstly having the three bed dorm to myself secondly the hostel is cool very low key...mixed people and ages probably 30 up so this was great after mylast hostel experience, thirdly played some soft lounge music but mainly because i met on my first morning here three lovely LOVELY Mexican guys. I put my name down to explore the flute reed cave and to go from the hostel needed three other people so off we went to the cave. We all seemed to lick straight away and it was an excellent day lots of banter and the cave was beautiful.....see attached pics! Everyone kept telling me chinese people are not friendly they are rude et but i have found them so friendly and helpful....sure very difficlt to communicate they have as little english as i have chinese but with the help (which ws a massive help the Mexican guys helped me with prices and communication) they had been travelling for two weeks through beijing, shanghi and xian- please ignore my spelling its difficult enough for me to type and get these photos on here so any spelling grammer is out of the window. I think because its a smaller town the chinese are friendlier the guys sid they were not so helpful happy in the other areas of china. Food.... the food is great too.. again things i can eat rice,noodles fish meat vegetables....banana pancakes!! actually not tried the fish yet....the chinese have great joy showing you the fish which look like little snakes with wings in their buckets (guess they went fishing, but they ont realise it totally puts you off!)

So Guilin is very calm, friendly, and pretty quaint in a way but also a bigger side to it it seems at night lots of lights, shows ...one of which we went to after the flute reed cave. The show was like a ballet/acrobat performance it was good seemed only we thought so probably being the only non chinese tourists there!!! and it appears they dont clap, they chat continually but are shy of clapping. The next day we went to Yangshuo.

Yangshuo was amazing just like i thought with the hill peaks above the water. We rented pour private motorized boat and it took three hours to get to yangshuo, with more fun and banter along the way with my new friends plus again a common interest in the same music so listening to their mexican music helped the time fly. In Yangshuo we sat and ate luch for about four hours the food was great, and then it was time to head ba to Guilin however Alfonso got side tracked by some young chinese girls and we ended up at the loal school with 2oo hundred students and us as their guinea pigs for english ummmmm. We st in groups with the girls(all girls school) and they asked questions and we tried to help with their english!!! After this Luis decided this was his new career, i decided i needed to move to mexico or if not definately never date an english guy again!! and we all seemed pretty tired on the bus ride back to Guilin. We went again to our fav place to eat late at night and ate pizza until about 1am....i think. Next day off to Elephant trunk hill again agreat day with my new friends arrrh they re so lovely to me, looking after me carrying my things i felt very spoilt!!!!!! Ricardo, Luis went off for a bike ride and me and Alfonso had lunch we all joined up again and then the guys had to leave to catch their overnight train. So sad but tonight im off to start my trk in kunming so im looking forward to that. Feels like this is finally fitting for me i never was sure of south east asia just thought it would be easier to travel alone, but it wasnt for me maybe my cambodia trip will be ok but anywhere else no no. hope you like the photos!!!!

Me, Alfonso, Luis and Ricardo for another foto le group and the next the sun and moon pagodas on the river Li near our hostel