China was an absolute joy and three weeks there followed by a week in Vietnam were merely sufficient to scratch the surface and whet our appetite for more. As we wrote last time, Adam has ended up in China teaching English and living with a charmingly delightful young Chinese girl with the equally delicious name of Sugar.

They met us in Guilin in southeast China at the end of July and we spent three weeks travelling and enjoying the experience. We visited Yangshou where the scenery was simply spectacular, Long Ji with its centuries old Dragon Backbone rice terraces, the wonderful walled town of Dali and the fabulously beautiful World Heritage site of Lijiang at the edge of the Himalaya. Adam's Chinese is very, very good and, of course, Sugar speaks it pretty well herself. So, directed by two exceptionally fine tour guides, Pen and I were able to visit places, see things and interact with people in ways which would have been quite difficult without their assistance.

But, by far the highlight of the whole Chinese experience was being able to survive the two "sleeper" buses Adam had arranged to get us from Lijiang down to the Vietnamese border and, in particular, the disgustingly nauseating smell of the second bus and the bout of explosive diarrhoea which interrupted Greg's progression through the Chinese and Vietnamese emigration/immigration procedures.