Right now I'm in Yangshuo been here for about two days now. The train ride down to Guilin was as smooth as possible. Me and my friend Ian (one of the guys i'm travelling with) were talking before hand about "wouldn't it be cool if there were just like some hot girls in our cabin and we just chilled with them the whole time," well our wish came true and sure enough there were two hot girls two bunks below us and we just hung out with them the whole time speaking chinese and playing cards. Also slept really well, much better than i expected to, woke up the next morning, and got off the train. We met up with ian's friend in guilin, and all of us went down to yangshuo. The area around here is beautiful, it is all small mountains, but they are like nothing i've ever seen. they are really steep on all sides, almost like platueaus, but there are trees and plants growing the whole way up. i'll put a few pictures up next week. the city here is also really cool. it's like a western traveller's paradise, all kinds of streetside cafes with genuinely good western food (most of them seem to be owned by expats). I've seen more forks and knives in the last couple days than the last two months in china. got a real breakfast with eggs over easy, toast, butter, fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee, and bacon...it was delicious.

the first night we just hung out in the city and chilled at a couple bars. It's a great city just to relax for a couple days with no real agenda. yesterday we rented mountain bikes and rode out into the countryside. That was fun, took a lot of great pictures. Then last night hung out again in the city, and today we climbed a mountain and chilled up there for awhile. There are lots of really touristy stores around, and it's hard to avoid buying some of the crap...i bought a pretty pimping silk robe and a huge dragon pipe.