We are in Hong Kong. Bridge's cousin and family are very kindly looking after us. (This is the view from the cousin's house).

We visited Ocean Park, where we saw Pandas....

And we went to the beach (see my young relatives in the foreground).

Then we took a 17 hour train trip up to Guilin, in mainland China. We slept on bunk beds in the "hardsleeper" coach.

In mainland China we avoided meat, dairy and eggs. Staple diet was rice, bamboo (and other cooked veg). Our guide was fascinated by this. "Many of my clients," she informed us, "are fat. But you have good buildings. This is because you do not eat the meat."

In Guilin we saw a mind-boggling acrobatics show, took a cable-car up Yao mountain and "taboggenned (sp??)" down, and saw the spectacular Reed Flute Cave (see pic).

We took a boat trip and a ride on a bamboo raft down rivers with breathtaking scenery....

And watched the local cormorant fishermen, who use cormorants to catch their fish.

We stayed in Yangshuo, which is located in an area of amazing scenery. Unfortunately, the scenery becomes obscured by people shoving things under your nose, every step you take, in an attempt to sell them to you. "No, thank-you" is interpreted as "I need some more persuading, please."

After Yangshuo (where we did a bit of cycling, hiking, and bamboo-rafting) we had a hold-on-to-your-seats trip through a mountain pass to rice-terrace country. [Overtaking is done immediately, preferably on blind corners. Where deemed necessary, the driver will hoot to warn any on-coming traffic.]

In the rice-terrace area we stayed in the village of Longji, which is a half-hour walk up hill from the nearest road. The area is inhabited by ethnic minorities.

The local people are very small....

...and very strong....

...and they know their way around well!

The tourist trade is booming at a rather alarming rate. We saw trees disappearing to become part of new guesthouses, and of course I worried about all the laundry, effluent, waste etc generated by the bus-loads of tourists to the area. We also saw a second-hand shop selling beautiful old things from the village, and I wished I could persuade some-one that the items should be kept safely in a museum, for heritage purposes. The old ways of life were changing in fast-forward right in-front of us and left us with a feeling of great sadness.

Overall, we found our trip into mainland China fascinating, but at the end of the week we were pleased to pass through the border at Shenzhen (angry-looking passport-control officials) into Hong Kong (very friendly passport-control officials) and have a little break from rice and fried veg.

We also felt that as tourists we were a bit like sausages in a sausage-machine. Our guide (who has never traveled outside of the province we were in) churned out rote-learnt passages about the obligatory tourist spots we were taken to. It felt very controlled, and I think that scratching beneath the surface of what is presented to westerners is a difficult task.