We were up pretty early today as we had to get several busses to a village called Dazhai, apart from getting very bored, hot and sweaty the journey was very uneventful. We did stop at Guilin to drop our big rucksacks off at the lockers at the train station so that we only had to carry our day bags with us. Even that was a bit of a hassle as the woman at the train station wanted to open every bag to check them. Even then she only had a very quick look. Not sure what she was expecting to find?

Once we got as close as we could to Dazhai we were greeted off the bus by loads of little local women all of them were 4-5 feet tall with big baskets on their back offering to take our day bags and carry them for us. I felt guilty and I think everyone else did too as no one had their bags carried. You could even have yourself carried as there were men waiting with a kind of seat that was carried by two men. Now that would really have been lazy!

The walk up to Dazhai village was about 45 mins uphill but felt a lot longer as we were all a bit tired from travelling all day. We finally arrived at the village and our hotel/hostel at around 6pm. Got checked in, had a shower which I must add had no curtain but a view out over to the hillside....a shower with a view (see pic).

Sorry Dave, but I have to mention the food here. We all paid 30 Yuan (£3) each and had a 9 course set meal provided by the hotel. It was so good and possibly one of the best meals we have had all trip, that we asked if we could have some more made for us as we all enjoyed it so much.

Not much to do here so we all had an early night as we had to get up to do a 6 mile trek through the rice terraces tomorrow.
Source:http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/peterward/2/1273769910/tpod.html