Yangshuo

Simon writes:

Here's some photos of Shanghai:



We're now in Yangshuou (an uneventful overnight train away), but you'll have to read through this drivel first before I get you fully up to speed: Shanghai was kinda hot and we didn't really get under its skin. I did manage to tame a gargantuan bowl of Shanghai dumplings right after we'd had a big lunch in a different restaurant (we couldn't find the dumpling place at first). We were leaving town that day so it had to be done. Other than that I ruined the mood by comparing some ancient and beautiful chinese rockeries to a garden centre in Croydon.

So we're now in Yangshuou, probably our last stop before Nam (mainly because we can't be arsed to go anywhere else). It's backpackertastic (oh God, somebody please put me out of my misery)! There's Pizza and fried breakfast and pasty people with unacceptable facial hair and pony tails everywhere. Still, the Western food has allowed me to have some lovely dumps. It seems I've been saving them up.

The scenery is supposed to be fantastic - rivers and mountains and rice paddies etc. We've hardly seen any of it because it started pissing down almost as soon as we got here. Instead we've been wandering forlornly round the tat shops refusing to buy stuff every 3 seconds.

We went on a cookery course, which was really good fun. Any of you lucky/unlucky enough to be invited to eat with us in the future will be ruthlessly experimented on. Here's Noelle modelling the egg dumplings, which were particularly good:

Here's me with a big knife:

In other news I also ate "pijieu yu", which is beer fish from the local river. Carp I think. Normally I would be appalled, but it was actually pretty good. Bye!