Last night a few of us went for a couple of beers free the orientation walk, but we didn’t stay out too long.

This morning I found my coffee fix at Starbucks Reserve around the corner, had a brief breakfast of eggs and a piece of toast, and today we set off for a float down Lijiang River. We stopped for lunch at a local community program house, which focuses on educating women and children.

Thats all we had time for today. I’m now sitting for a coffee at Mingyuan Coffee, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my free days on this trip after KL. Walking around the local area, I often got stopped by local students who were wanting to interview foreigners, and ask them questions about China. Aside from that specific experience, China is probably the only country where I felt like I’ve stood out as a foreigner – there have been many times on this trip where I’ve noticed people staring at me and our group, and even sometimes taking sneaky photos of us.

At night we went out for dinner at an Indian restaurant as we were a bit tired of Chinese food, then went out to some bars and found some places with live music.

Thursday

I’m now on the bus to the airport, I think in Guilin. Yesterday was a fantastic day, I feel like I’m back into the relaxed travel groove. It’s about halfway through my trip now, and I’ve booked my final leg of the tour and flight home. Time to buckle up and really soak up the last part of the trip.

Yesterday we hired bikes, riding around the Yulong river, and stopping for lunch and coffee at a local restaurant. The scenery was stunning, and quintessentially Chinese – rice fields, mountains, green grass, farmers, food stalls. In the afternoon a few of us guys went out for a walk up a local lookout spot, and at some point (I can’t remember what day it was) we wen to a light show performance which I thought was going to be overly touristic, but was actually quite cool.

It was nice to have this kind of nature experience before we head back to another big city today – Shanghai.