Yangshuo is not Guilin apparently, but we rode "Tan"dem

Yes it was nice, our first childless sleep for nearly nine months, and we did call Waipo early in the morning to speak to her and Leilei and she said there was no problem. She probably would have said the same if there had been, but she really wanted to be with him.

I thought we were in Guilin, and maybe we were, but this was not central Guilin anyway. There were quite a few foreigners around so I wasn't so special...at least I admit it. But we had something nice planned - we were going to go for a bike ride. This is something so typically Chinese but in fact outside of Shanghai I've never ridden a bike in China before, and even in Shanghai it was because the taxi driver refused to take Tan's bike sticking out of the back of the cab so I had to ride back in the middle of the night and get lost...

So at some time in the late morning we found ourselves at some bike place, and I was rather happily surprised to be confronted with a tandem bike, or should that be TanDom? (no!). That sounds romantic...Daisy Daisy give me your answer do...etc. but I'm sure Daisy at least helped pedal. It's not that easy to be aware that your partner is not pedalling as you have to look behind you while still steering and she nearly caused me to crash into a ditch but I found out Tan was not putting much effort into our ride along the river. Lao Ma had her own bike and I considered swapping Tan for her but baulked at the thought of a larger person not pulling her weight so carried on manfully, safe in the knowledge that my muscles would be the benefactors.

Tan...Tan...give me your answer do...oh no too late!

We reached somewhere in time for a meal - that is generally the case. And Tan and I had a photo opportunity to be the king and queen of...well something or somewhere.

King and Queen of Guilin

Later we did go to some touristy area and Tan bought a quite nice shawl/scarf thing. I saw a small hotel in the centre of town called "Fawlty Towers", which brought a small grin to my face.

Flowery Twats in Yangshuo

In the evening we went to a street with some bars in it where we saw more foreigners. We chose a bar with some music coming out of it but it sounded more like they were tuning up. In fact it was a single bloke with an acoustic guitar in full swing, singing western songs. Although his voice was pretty good the guitar was dreadfully out of tune. Really like some strings were a semitone flat and even the beer didn't make it better. It was all I could do to stop myself going up to him and helping him out and I am slightly regretful that I didn't.

We didn't stay too late as we wanted a relatively early start tomorrow, so home well before midnight and a call to Leilei and Waipo later and we were asleep.