Rest of south China then on to Vietnam

Problems with accessing the blog in China meant we have struggled to post recently. So now we are in Vietnam we can give a quick update on what we have been doing the last few weeks. Prepare for a whirlwind tour.

After leaving tiger leaping george, we stopped for a couple of nights in Zhongdian (affectionately renamed Shangri-La by the locals for the tourists sake). Hired the old push rods and went exploring.

Then it was on to Kunming to get to Guilin via the train. We met the best dressed man here. He was a don. Paul departed our company in Kunming to go to Laos to see Kim, who we met in Goa, for about 10 days.

In Guilin we met Kristine who stayed with us for a few days (so back up to a full quota of people). After Rob fulfilling his constant desire for western food (especially McDonalds), we got a bamboo raft along the Li river to Yangshou. Arriving in Yang Vegas (as we named it) we had a surprise. We had some good times here, and managed to worm our way into teaching English for a couple of nights. This was in return for free food and dirt cheap accomodation. Only catch was 1 hour per night. The students just wanted to chat and drink so fine by us. They brought in moonshine, beer and fruit. Bonus. They entertained us with cards and after class took us to KTV which is a karaoke bar.

I (Simon) would have liked to stay here for a long time, but unfortunately our visas were going to expire soon. Rob and Kristine stayed here as they had loads of time left on their visas. So back on the road again. Off to NAM Colm and I went. A quick hop to Nanning then across the border the day after.

That was fun. At first the Chinese border guy told us we had overstayed our stay by 1 day, thus wanting more money. Finally we got it through to him that there were only 30 days in November!!!! Then on to the Vietnamese officials. Even though we had payed for our visas they wanted more money......10 dollars in fact. We blagged our way through because I had only a 50 dollar note. We were the only people on our bus that didn't pay!! Nice bit of corruption there then.

So on to Hanoi......................