At night we decide to go to the highly recommended light show in the nearby town of Yangshuo.

Perhaps because I’ve heard nothing but good about it and am looking forward to it very much, torrential rain floods the area the minute we try to set off. Our receptionist, a dwarf named Angel (seriously), assures us it’s seasonal and will stop at any minute, thrusting flimsy ponchos at us and ushering us out into the downpour. By this time the puddles are ankle deep already, and we wade about in the carpark miserably waiting for our taxi.

Sure enough, though, the rain stops as quickly as it started and we find ourselves strolling through a vast park, following behind many hundreds of Chinese who all seem to know where they’re going and are doing it at a rapid pace, invariably in directions that no-one else is going.

We pass a large rotunda with upturned cornices, an artificial lake and another rotunda that, looking back, may well have been the first one again. Eventually we find ourselves seated in row 18 of the most spectacular natural amphitheatre I’ve ever seen (granted, probably the only natural amphitheatre I’ve ever seen).

Despite the seats looking suspiciously like something that had been wrenched off a dunny, the atmosphere is electric. Spread before us is a very black, very still lake, periodically lit up by shots of lightning that reveal in spectacular fashion a ring of surrounding mountains.

The show, when it starts, is dazzling. In a nutshell, it consists of several thousand performers – including a couple of oxen – who dance about in reflective outfits and sail around the lake waving flaming torches in formation. Sounds dull, I admit, but done on such a grand scale you can’t help but feel a little awed.

There was a plot, I’m sure, but like last week’s Guangzhou ballet it passed us by; we did, however, discern something of a love triangle between the pretty soprano singer, a young flautist in black pyjamas and one of the bejewelled oxen. Things got a little racy when two topless fishermen appeared on the scene, but they were bundled off so quickly that it may well be they’d strayed on set by mistake.

We left well satisfied with the show and thrilled to bits that we’d bagged a couple of free ponchos to boot.