kez & hay travels 06

After leaving Ping'An we headed straight down to the south of Guilin to a small backpackers village called Yangshuo, (apparently this means "Kerry" in Chinese).  Yangshuo sits on the Li River and is surrounded by hundreds of Karst hills (see photos).   We bartered our way to a cheap river cruise up the Li River, which was very idyllic and Hayley got snappy happy with the camera. The next 2 days we planned bike trips galore, but unfortunately it poured down so we replaced the cycling excursions for brunch and a dvd. Kerry also did a Tai'Chi class to find her Ying and Yang, and we both did a 1 hour calligraphy class - we were told that the art of calligraphy promotes a healthy life style, we didn't really understand how but the class was very relaxing. After a couple of days of not doing much we boarded our first overnight bus trip - Oh what joy - this has been the worst trip yet. With beds up front of the bus we tried to settle down for a 12 hour journey of neverending bumpy roads, ..... Eventually arrived in Macau to a heavy downpour and we got our "Entente Cordial" macs out - you'll be pleased to hear Kevin! We met Jim (Kerry's flatmate at Uni) who has been living here for the past 3 years, and stayed at his for 2 nights. Glued to the sky tv for a lot of the time, we did do some sightseeing! We saw the Portuguese fortresses, 17th century Baroque churches and sampled the Macanese food and Portuguese port. Macau is a weird combination of European style buildings surrounded by collosal Casino giants. Casinos are continuously popping up making way for the Las Vegas of Asia. Getting ready now for the bright lights of Hong Kong.