  Local time 3.10pm after a good nights sleep, yuqi and i awoke at about 8am. We had breakfast downstairs in the hotel. It was a passable buffet with very watered down fruit colour water being advertised as "juice". We met jinbo, his mum and a different driver to yesterday. The traffic in shen yang centre was in chaos due to some elderly people demonstrating against the government's poor benefits for them. Because of this we scrapped our original plan to look around the city. Instead, jinbo was going to take us to some caves. We departed just after nine, and it was an uneventful 3 hour drive to ben xi where the cave is situated. We stopped for a quick lunch on the way, a break was nice as the poor condition of some of the roads had left us somewhat dizzy :) we arrived, parked and took a small electric car to the cave mouth. It was a huge magnificent opening in the side of a mountain with a small lake beside it. I've got some great pictures to follow on the website soon. The cave itself is called the shui dong (water cave) as the length of it is 2m deep with crystal clear water.
We were given thick coats to wear as it was only 10 degrees c inside. We boarded a small electric boat and started the 2.8km long journey into the depths of the earth. Inside it was absolutely spectacular, and a little scary. With massive stalagtites towering above us, it made us feel really small and fragile. The limestone ranged from green to a beautiful creamy white colour, and all the major formations had been given names by the explorers.
At times, the cave ceiling and stalagtites were so low, we all had to duck to avoid being hit. At the end, the boat turned around and took us back out. Back at the cave entrance we paused for A photo or two and headed back out into the sunshine. Going from 10 to 30+ degrees in seconds is quite an interesting feeling. As i write this, we're in the car on the way back to shen yang. We're going to have dinner when we arrive then leave jinbo who's travelling to beijing to work. After that, yuqi and i will be visiting more of her family. More about that later ... 
