Back in China

It's been a while since our last post and we've moved about a bit since then.
From Hoi An in central Vietnam we travelled to the north east to Cat Ba island. It is situated in the south of Ha Long bay, famous for the spectacular karst (limestone) outcrops that rise dramatically out of the water in sheer cliffs a few hundred metres high. Most of the island is also a national park full of rare and endangered species of monkeys and other animals.
Unfortunately the weather while was pretty poor with lots of rain and mist. We still managed to get in a few walks and an afternoon on the beach though. We went on a boat trip around the bay and visited one of the huge caves created by the erosion. We visited 'monkey island' too, but there was a thunderstorm. We got absolutely drenched and saw one lonely monkey sheltering under a ledge.
After Cat Ba we returned to Hanoi and caught the overnight train to Nanning in southern China. We continued straight on from there, a few hundred kilometres north to a small town called Yangshuo. It has similar karst landscape, but this time surrounded by rice paddies and orange orchards. We had a great hike along the Li river although part of the path was flooded (there has been two weeks of torrential rain in the province apparently) and a local bamboo raft boat owner took advantage of our situation and demanded a rip-off 5 pound ride around the flooded part - about a two-minute ride along the river. Apart from that it was great despite the rain.
We are in the city of Guilin, just north of Yangshou now. Yesterday we caught a couple of buses to visit the dramatic dragon's backbone rice terraces, where the mountains have been landscaped into terraces up the very steep mountainside for hundreds of metres. You can hike up to the top of the hills and the views are fantastic. We almost didn't get there though as there'd been a landslide across one of the mountain roads. We had to get off the bus and scramble down the mud to another bus on the otherside. At least we weren't carrying massive packs of stuff like some of the local passengers!
We are heading to Sichuan province tomorrow, the city of Chengdu. We'll be based there a week and doing day trips to visit the world's biggest buddha, a holy mountain and the panda breeding base (Robin's highlight of the whole trip).
PS. We can't add pictures at the moment, but we'll add some more when we find a better computer.