This wasn't part of the plan

I'm in China, in a place called Yangshuo which is an overnight bus journey from Hong Kong - I know this because I had the misfortune of doing it. The bus got me here but the state of Chinese roads leave a lot to be desired - I imagine being put in a tumble dryer for 12 hours would achieve a similar effect to how I felt when I finally got off the bus. Oh well, I shouldn't complain too much because the bus was actually quite comfortable with beds that were almost flat so you could lie down in them - although I didn't sleep a wink because of the state of the roads and the drivers tendency to blast the horn every 10 seconds or so. I'm pretty sure the horn was facing the wrong way back into the bus and it was all part of some bizarre Chinese joke that was cracking the driver up every time he hit the horn and we all hit the ceiling.

Anyway, it was worth the white-knuckle ride because the scenery in Yangshuo is quite superb. You can check it out here if you're interested: http://www.yangers.com. I spent a couple of days wandering around the town and taking in the scenery and things - there are quite a lot of western people here (in fact, I got the bus over with a couple who are here teaching English) so I've had a chance to hook up with some other travelers and find out what they've been up to and places to go to in China. I sampled the local western food outlets which aren't great but better than some of the other things I've smelt and I've taken plenty of pictures too (A selection of them will be going up here at some point: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorontour).

I found a hostel which offered me a nice double room with TV and en-suite bathroom for the sum of 5 pounds a night so I decided to splash out rather than go for the 1 pound a night dorm - which later turned out to be a good decision. I also made plans to go for a bike ride around the surrounding area on the Wednesday with a guy I met and also to go on a boat trip and a hike with a few other people but then on the Wednesday morning I woke up and had been stuck down with an unpleasant bout of food poisoning. I guessed that riding a bike over some rough terrain wouldn't be the best cure for it so I spent the day equally split between lying in bed feeling sorry for myself and in the bathroom - I'll say no more than that. I was quite lucky in some ways because I'd rather be in my own room with an adjoining bathroom than in a dorm and also the China Open Snooker Championships were on TV for a lot of the day so I could just chill out and watch that

It was a bit noisy in the street outside - Yangshuo is probably the most Western town in China and is full of tourists and people selling various items of junk and tat - I imagine it's the Chinese equivalent of Blackpool (if you can imagine that). There was some character wandering up and down the street playing his Chinese flute and generally winding me up. Then some guy joined in with a fiddle except he was doing excerpts from The King and I and the theme from Titanic. I started dreaming up more and more elaborate ways to wipe them from the planet - a man with a lot of free time is a dangerous man. Then in the evening the club along the street started up for the night - my goodness what a noise. I think they were testing just how loud their sound system would go and I can report that it is very loud indeed - if you imagine the sound system from Wembley or somewhere, somehow jammed into your bathroom and cranked up to number 11, no, number 12 then that's how it felt to me. I put my earplugs in (Thanks John) and managed to get to sleep and to be fair to them they did turn it off at 7:30 am so it wasn't too bad

I reckoned I'd be over my food poisoning by the next day and could go and do my boat trip. Unfortunately I wasn't any better the next day and by the Thursday morning when I woke up at 5am I was in such a state that I took myself up to the hospital to see what they thought. I was actually considering jumping on a plane to Hong Kong because I was pretty sure the standard of medical care was going to be pretty poor. I had visions of some crazed Chinese doctor cutting open my stomach and trying to scoop out the virus with his grubby hands and my views weren't moderated when I got the hospital and there were cigarette ends on the floor next to a pool of vomit
and a doctor diagnosing a child whilst smoking a cigarette. If my bowels would have held I would have ran straight out of there but I figured that it wouldn't hurt to at least see what he had to say. He didn't speak any English so after a little game of charades and the use of the international sign for vomiting and diarrhea (you don't see that on Give Us a Clue do you?) I was taken to another doctor in a different wing which was much cleaner and he spoke a bit of English. He had a book called something like "Conversations Between Doctors and Patients in Chinese and English" and together we managed to communicate - the though did occur to me though that he might not quite understand what I was saying and chop my leg off or something. He told me that I would stay in the hospital and they'd put me on a drip - something I wasn't altogether happy with, in fact I was quite concerned about staying there. But before I had a chance to think about it and do a runner the nurse appeared and took me to my room. I started to relax a bit because the room was pretty clean and the drip and everything came from a new sterile packet - no rusty old needles for me thank you very much.

After a while another doctor came in and in good English introduced himself as Doctor Dong from Hong Kong. I supressed a laugh and he told me that I'd have to stay in hospital for a few days while they gave me some rehydation fluid and antibiotics. I protested a bit and he came back and told me that I could go back to the hostel later that day as long as I came back again for more fluid and drugs which sounded like a good deal to me. I stayed in hospital for the rest of the day, went to the hostel and then went back again the next day - thankfully I was already starting to feel a lot better.

On the Friday I shared a hospital room with a Canadian guy called Jimmy who was an English teacher in Yangshuo and who was into his 5th day of food poisoning. Some of his students came to visit and I got the impression that Jimmy hadn't been teaching them English in the classical textbook way. Each sentence from them was decorated with one or two instances of a particular Anglo-Saxon word and whilst it added colour and flourish to whatever they had to say it probably wasn't going to get them too far in the tourist industry which was where they were hoping to work. Seemily innocent sentences such as "Who are you?", "What time is it?", "Ten-thirty", "Would
you like a banana" took on a slightly different vibe to what you might expect. Jimmy just laughed and told me that he wasn't a typical English teacher and that they weren't typical students. It all made for a fun-filled, but crude, few hours and we took some photos of us in our death beds.

Saturday I was feeling much better so went out for a walk with the intention of climbing one of hills nearby - this was thwarted when I couldn't find the path leading up it and that's probably just as well because when I got back the hostel I fell into bed exhausted. Perhaps I had tried to do too much too soon. That evening I went to see a pretty amazing light show on the river where they light up the hills nearby and have loads of singers and dancers jumping about. I haven't a clue what was going on despite being assured by the tour guide that I didn't need to speak Mandarin. The fun was dampened a bit because from start to finish it absolutely poured with rain. The lightening added a new dimension but I'm reasonably sure it wasn't part of the show. It looked fantastic though - you can see some of the pictures here (not mine): http://www.yangers.com/Yangshuo/Liu_Sanjie.htm

So it's not been a fantastic few days for me and I've not seen as much of Yangshuo as I wanted to but I'm a bit sick of it now - the food posioning incident kind of robbed me of my momentum and now I just want to get moving onto somewhere else so I can start again. So I've booked a train ticket for Tuesday when I go to Yichang on the Yangtzee river and next to the massive 3 Gorges Dam construction project. I hope to get a hydrofoil through the dam (I assume there is a lock and we don't need to jump it) and down the river to Chongqing where I'll decide where to go next.

Again, thanks for the emails and keep them coming- I'm not fantastic at replying to them straight away but will get around to it eventually and it's great to hear from you all while I'm away.

All the best,
Gregor