I arrived in YangShuo via a Li River cruise from Guilin, where I took more pictures than seems reasonable. When I travel guilin there, I booked a Guilin tour from a local travel agent in Guilin. This area had me longing to buy an SLR camera. When I come back, a big fancy camera will be accompanying me! The area is packed with hundreds of mountains. It's so gorgeous that it inspired the image on the back of the 20 yuan bill.

That first night in YangShuo (Thursday), we explored the town (just basically a few roads packed with restaurants and shops), then watched "Impression on SanJie Liu," a massive live performance directed by Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese film director. It's a continuation of one of his romantic movies... in this performance, over 600 performers representing various minority groups come together to show the long-awaited wedding of the couple from Zhang's film. You can watch part of the hour-long performance here.

Friday, we went to the mudcaves. I love caving in the states, but this was a completely different experience! Caving in China is much more touristy (or at least the two I've been to), and should not be considered an adventure or outdoor activity. However, this Water Cave is amazing - it's massive, and to enter you must boat in (Aileen! You can boat into caves! But no tacos, unfortunately), walk (sometimes crawl) along the pathways leading to the center attraction: mud pools! The Chinese insist they have some healing property, but mostly it's just fun to play and buy your photographs. The most underrated part of the caves is at the very end (a bit of a walk away from the mud): a gorgeous cave waterfall. Unfortunately, I was not brave enough to bring my camera into the dark/dank environment.

Saturday, the crew left me in Yangshuo, but I kept myself busy with an all-day group climb. The night before, I walked down what I call "climber's road" and checked out the three biggest climbing companies. I peeked into Lizard Lounge, where I saw a climbing wall and a half dozen ripped, shirtless Chinese men. So that's where the hot Chinese guys climb. Probably not for me. I moved on to Spiderman climbing, which seemed to be for the hard-core climbers: bare-bones essentials.

You'll find that the Chinese will name anything after what it resembles. This is one that I actually think is brilliant... see the white on the side of the mountain? Looks like a cowboy on his steed! ...

Not bad. And then I saw Karst climbing and I knew it was perfect for me. It was basically just all kick-ass female climbers. So, I show up Saturday morning only to find that it was not in fact Echo (the woman with excellent English) who would guide me, but rather a man whose name I can still not pronounce whose English left much to be desired who would spend the day with me. But no sooner did I have a chance to worry when a group of 6+ loud, crazy, FUN Chinese women popped into the van. The guilin tour guide are excellent, at the the one we met were excellent.

Sunday I moved to Monkey Jane's Hostel... I enjoyed the guilin travel service and recommend it to some of my friends. so I thought I'd get to know the owner! Also a very cool Chinese woman. Funny story about the bar... Friday night two of my JT friends were kicked out for essentially being bad sports while playing beer.