The long way home 3 months of travel from London - Sydney via Asia - where the bananas are cheap, the sun always shines (except when it rains) and everything it possible... for a price!

Cherie, Rod and I finally met up again in Yang Shuo which is a small town outside of Guilin - and this time we have managed to actually find a relatively small town to chill out in!! For the first couple of days we did exactly that - chill out, read books, drink milkshakes and relax and by Friday we were ready for another adventure so hired bicycles and set out for the day. Armed with a map that only bears a vague resembleance to the town we set off to explore the nearby villages. There is a bike path that winds it's way alongside the river which, although incredibly bumpy, was quite an easy ride through some of the most amazing scenery I have seen in China. We cycled past rice paddies, through tiny villages and alongside limestone cliffs that make for a spectacular view. We must have riden for about 4 hours and by the time we headed back in to town we were all knackered! Being that the above described trip was such a success and so peaceful and tranquil yesterady we decided to head out on bikes again to find somewhere along the river to swim. We set off pretty early and took the main road out of town that my rough guide assured me would lead us to a place on the river where we could swim. The first trouble arose when it became neccessary to cycle through a roundabout which seemed to have about 8 different 'lanes' of traffic hurtling through it at high speed and in all directions at once. In my attempt to follow Rod through I narrowly escaped being crushed between an electric cart (much like a golf buggy) and a cart selling bananas - what a way to go! Having just recovered from this near mishap I looked up to see a coach hurtling towards me, horn blaring and a mini van blocking any hope I had of getting out of it's way before I was crushed to my death. I swerved in front of the mini van, nearly took out a toothless old lady and landed half way up the gutter - just in time!!! The road that we had to ride up next did appear to have a bike lane I was relieved to see. Unfortunately however, this appeared to be taken up by Chinese tourists on bikes who, as I was about to discover, cycle in the same haphazard fashion in which they drive! 4 or 5 wide, sometimes in the middle of a lane of traffic, on more than 1 occasion someone swerved in front of me then slammed on the brakes causing me to either swerve into a lane of traffic to avoid them or slam on the breaks myself, risking flying over the front of the handles bars after such an abrupt stop. This was done on both occasions so that the person in front of me was in a good position to take a photo of me as I attempted to screetch to a halt!!! At that moment I gained an insight into how Bradgalina must feel and understood the appeal of retreating to Namibia. So here we are cycling along a highway, being chased by the paperazi on bikes thinking - this isn't the serene outing I had imagined.... Luckily most of the Chines tourists were heading to the butterfly cave and we were taking a dirt path off to the right along the river - so our journey becaome peaceful once again and we headed down to the river for a refreshing swim. Chinese people either don't swim, think it is far too cold to be swimming at this time of year or are aware of some man eating beast that lives in the river because people were either so surprised to see us in the water that they nearly fell off their bikes as they rode past or they openly laughed at us and pointed us out to their friends. Either way - the water was lovely and nothing seemed to be lurking beneath. YangShuo has a number of caves that can be visted on tours organised by the guesthouses. We chose to head out to the water cave - as the brouchure stated - this was the real water cavbe not one of the many fake water caves. I don't know what the fake water caves are like but the real one is a bit crap!! We arrived dressed in boardies and flip flops and piled into a wooden boat with 3 Middleaged Chinese couples. The men were all wearing suits and chain smoked for the duration of the tour and the women were also dressed in similar unsuitable attire for caving - well I though so anyway, although they were prob looking at us thinking the same thing. The main features of this cave were a mud bath that we waded around in for a bit ( the Chinese couples in suits jsut watched us with fascination) but it smealt a bit like sewerage so we got out - and a waterfall and pool which was pretty unimpressive and too cold to swim in. A helpful guide pointed out the formations to us. Despite having names like 'Frog love the fairly lady' and 'Monks make love' I couldn't make any many of the figures I was supposed to be able to see - just looked like a load of rocks to me. We were shown the stalic mits and stalic tits - the brouchure even encouranges you to tap them and see if you can make beautiful music - conservation doesn't seem to be big in parts of China. Despite the caves being a dissapointment the day was very amusing, so all was not lost. We are going hot air ballooning tomorrow. Cherie and Rod have been before but I haven't so am really looking forward to it!! Just hope the weather is good!!!