'Tour de Rice Fields'

Dear Diary,Today we have our bags packed once more and we are due to fly North to Chengdu at midnight. We covered the final spots we'd missed in Guilin over the last few days so here's a quick run down.We took a tour North to the rice feilds and river of Longshen, our tour included an actual Chinese tour guide (thats right - with microphone and yellow flag) who told us about the local villages the long haired women who have hair "up to 2.1 metres in length" and that the men are not allowed out of the house unless the women says - naturally tris was nervous. We visited there river houses and watched a show along with about 20 other bus loads which was set along side the river and was very cool (funnily enough the show was narated by our little tour guide friend!!). We were then taken to the rice feilds where we ate the local food which is cooked in bamboo, and climbed a few billion stairs to the lookout. Now we cannot confirm if the rice plants grew long or short grain, but suspect good old Sunbeam has something to do with it. The view really was incredible!!We also spent a day in a local park with a huge limestone cave - Where we particularly enjoyed the swarms of bats, but very cool to see! After returning to our hostel we celebrated our efforts (along with Anzac day and walking a good 10kms!!) with a beer, some girl guide biscuts we have been saving - and a game if monopoly.Today we mangaged to walk past the wholesale "shops" selling anything from Toilets - birdbaths and proudly post our first package home, should be there in two months!!!So nearing two weeks down - and plenty of smiles.Love McDuffTristan & Michele

Dear diary ...So yes we have crossed the border into mainland china and have discovered a few problems with communication - not just that we don't speak the language but that there is a national block on facebook and blogs so this post is coming to you via copy and paste from an email to mum! So sorry there are no pictures and im not exactly sure where trist finished up in the last post but I'll start with crossing into china but il try and keep it brief because we have packed a fair bit in.So with packs on our backs we caught a subway for 2 hours consisting of 4 different trains and not enough space to take off our bags so stood the whole way. With tired shoulders we cleared immigration in Shenzhen and found a cafe we had been told to check out to catch our breath. Next we took our lives into our hands and headed into another train station which had the whole population of Levin in it to buy an overnight train ticket to Guilin. Nobody spoke English so after 4 20 min queues for 4 different ticket booths and a lot of sign language we managed to get it sorted!We waited 5 hours people watching in the sun outside the station (first blue sky since leaving home) then got onto our 'hardsleeper' carriage and up onto the third bunk (in very close proximity with the roof) - this is where we stayed for 13 hours!In Guilin we booked into a great hostel with English speaking hosts (yay). Just our luck the rainy season has come early this year so in between the downpoors we have been on some great adventures. Highlights being the twinlakes with teahouses, twin pagodas and an incredible hill we climbed to check out the flooded river (Now lapping at the edge of the hill) and a budda cave beneath. Tristans highlight was the underground market that was so big I was too exhausted to see all the shops!We are doing our best to keep up with taking as many photos as the locals seem to take so hope to post some soon. We are here for a couple more days before flying to Chengdu in search of the panda.McDuffMichele and Tristan

From Hong Kong

After an awesome send off we managed to negotiate our way through the airports to make it to Hong Kong!! We have had a great time here staying with the Fraser's and in our few days we have seen Hong Kong island, watched the hustle in the markets, visited ''the peak'' and checked out some crazy looking creatures at the zoo. Yesterday we took the ferry across to Macau, another local country (and another passport stamp collected!!) this place basically had two key features, Casinos & churches with a bunch of markets and beat-up looking buildings in-between which was pretty cool for a day trip.

We've started getting stuck into the local grub, which has got a little better from our first attempt (avoiding the duck and rat we sat proudly ordering our first vegetarian dish, we were then delivered some boiled lettuce... downright disappointing!!).

We are crossing into mainland China tomorrow, our new bible ''the China rough guide'' explains the border crossing as a bit of a mosh pit, so should be fun!! But although there are literally billions of people here they seem to be quite polite (potentially because we are bigger than most of them) anyway we have our dried noodles and plenty of water packed so im sure we will update you all from there!! FYI in Southern China Facebook is hard to use so dont be offended if you have written to us on there and we dont reply - email should be fine though.

The above photo is of 'Jackie Chan' at walk of the stars.

McDuff

Tristan and Michele

WE ARE OFF

Dear diary ...

April 15th and we are about to embark on a one year around the world adventure. First stop Hong Kong, followed by China, and Intrepid Journey to Russia then onto Europe and beyond!

We have our bags packed, passports and a floor to sleep on for our first night - what more can we need?

This is us happy at our engagement party ... lets hope the smiles are still this big after one year of living out of a pack! We'll do our best to get to internet cafes as much as possible and keep you posted on our progess.

Love McDuff

Michele and Tristan