Yunnan province, China

Pictures added finally!!
Hello! Long time since I've blogged - sorry! Also the photo adding thing ain't working. ALSO, I can't even view my own blog in China - its barred! Along with BBC news sites, but I thought my blog was pretty uncontroversial? There was a fire in an internet cafe a few years ago so lots of cafes were closed down and internet is a therefore bit more difficult to find here!

Well, have visited Kunming - very pleasant city, with nice big buffet breakfasts at the hotel, and a walk up a big hill with a Dragon Gate at the top and a big lake by the side. Fun getting lost along the trails, as the signs are all in Chinese - except, ironically, for the ones that tell you not to smoke, which are also in English. Funny, as the only people smoking there are the Chinese! You never get bored walking in the beautiful countryside with marvelous views and brightly painted temples and locally-dressed old ladies, because even when you've had your fill of all that, you can always stop and have a game of throwing darts at balloons on a board to see what you've won. Its a bit nervewracking walking past when people play this, as they don't always throw hard enough, or perhaps the balloons are made of extra-strong plastic/filled with concrete, because they don't always burst when hit, and the dart bounces off and up into the air, free to land in your foot/shoulder/head. How can you get bored when all this is there for you?!

Dali next. The old town is so full of Chinese tourists, and not unjustly so, but getting a little too 'Kao San Road' style. Very nice cake shop with Snickers cheesecake and chocolate cake ('The Sweet Tooth') - I like to try the local food you know. Walked up a big hill-range next to the town ad a big lake called Erhai Hu (supposed to be in the shape of an ear. As usual my imagination wasn't as vivid as that of whoever gave the place its name. All I saw was a big lake) rather than taking the cable car, in an attempt to be healthy, and wheezed our way up to the cafe halfway up for a bowl of porridge (well they didn't have any chocolate cake). The views were great. We got the cable car back down to the bottom.

Next stop was Lijiang, which I travelled to with my Dutch friend Simone who I met in Dali. Lijiang is just a bigger version of Dali with many many many Chinese tourists. We decided to have hotpot that night, and chose a street full of loud but darkly lit restaurants with girls dressed in the traditinal tribal dresses, dancing the traditional dances, to techno music. The music got louder and louder as the night wore on, and each different restaurant was playing different tunes, so it was a bit difficult to hear yourself think, or eat. However, the whole hotpot menu was in Chinese, so we just pointed at the dishes on other people's tables and at a couple of random things in the menu, and were lucky to receive two plates of meat and two of lettuce and cabbage. These we tipped into the boiling broth on the hotplate in the middle of our table and cooked and ate the whole lot. Very nice. And a funny experience, with the techno-traditional dancers.

In Lijiang we also did our research for the main purpose of the trip to the north of Yunnan: to walk the Tiger Leaping Gorge Trek. We had to get a bus about 2 hours north to the start of the trek. We got there about 10am, in plenty of time to start walking, but instead decided to stop at Jane's Guesthouse eating and drinking for the rest of the day in the sun. Fortunately it was a lovely day for walking the next day too. We set off about 9am and did the horrible "28 bends" which is not only bendy as the name suggests, but also very steep. It was a really lovely trek, as we saw hardly anyone else the whole trip. Just the occasional donkey with man who were keen to help us along, but we were determined to walk the whole thing. Dotted along the trek are lots of guestouses where you can just stop to eat and drink or stay the night, and its all really cheap. Always tea on offer, and even "special" herbal tea from the "weeds" growing along the trek!

At the end of the first day we stayed at Halfway guesthouse, which had the most amazing views of the mountainside from everywhere you sat - even from the toilet! Ate tasty Baba, which is the local bread, wih yak meat and local cheese, and drank equally tasty Dali beer. Next day we decided to explore the "middle" gorge, which goes right down to the bottom of the gorge, and isn't officially recognised by the government as part of the Tiger Leapig Gorge, so the locals charge you extra to go down, and then charge again for you to go up! Kind of scary going up the "ladder" path, if you're a bit afraid of heights, like me, as it is so steep, and one sign pointing to the left saying "safe path" and pointing to the right saying "dangerous ladder" made me laugh - which way should I go?? Yes I chose the safe path, hough I didn't feel all that safe.

Now I'm in Zhongdian, which is I like a lot better than he well-known and visited Dali and Lijiang. Maybe because its so freezing cold here (we had snow the last 2 nights!), but there are few tourists of any kind. Its also very close to Tibet, and we visited a Tibetan monastery which was lovely - and I was surprised at how different to the Chinese style everything is. Beautiful paintings all over the walls and the smell of yak butter candles burning. We were looking out for pictures of the Dali Lama but didn't spot any on display. We're using the Lonely Planet as our guidebook, and although it was only published last year (which prob means the info was gathered about 2004), loads of things are wrong, and I don't think its because they've been misinformed, as their other guides don't have so many wrong things in. Its more likely that China is changing so rapidly and that is why all the population figures and hotel prices and entry fee prices are so wildly different to what it says in the book. I thought that was quite interesting. So there. That's the end of Yunnan.