Hey there- So, I can't seem to travel on my own without a hospital visit in there somewhere. I had this growing rash on my arm and paid $1.15 for a medical consultation at the local hospital on Sunday. A 4-min. bloodtest later I was told I was only having an allergic reaction to "something" I may have eaten. Either way, I got some medicine and the rash is definitely better! Otherwise, I've been at the Shaolin Temple (home of Kungfu) where I did lots of things in addition to a one-hour lesson which proved to be...difficult! It was definitely a [View Full Entry]

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Just outside of Dali, is one of many Bai villages - Xizhou where we drove out to see the local Bai minority tribes trading and buying their daily supplies from the Market and to see the small laneways and preserved architecture in the old village. We had an incredible time here watching the local men & women carry their baskets and barter for their fruit & vegies. [View Full Entry]

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Woke up early to catch Bus 63 from opposite the Camelia Hotel to Central Bus station on Beijing Lu. Hitting the road for our 5 hour bus ride to Dali, we were excited to get out of town and see some of the countryside along this route. Took about an hour to get out of the city and into the countryside. It was amazingly lush and green and was dotted with little villages and rice paddies. Each village seemed to have different symbols or paintings on their traditional homes which was fascinating to see, it was hard to stop looking out [View Full Entry]

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So the prices in China can be as cheap or as expensive as you want them to be. For future reference the exchange rate is 1 AUD = 6.158RMB at least when i swapped. So today I got up at about 9am. Got my stuff ready to check out. We (me, Mikk, Jian and Kathy) booked some horses up to Cangshan mountain for 60RMB (less than $10 AUD for there and back - 1 hour+ each way). Had some dumplings for breakfast. Riding the horses up the mountains was something else. The horses in China are more like mules ( a [View Full Entry]

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Got up at 6:30am. Barely. Mikk and me went to the bus station and got the 7:45 to Dali. Ended up in Dali 1pm (we got the more local bus 94 yunnan). Met a cute little kid on the bus who actually could pull of a mohawk. When we got to Dali it was the old town and we didnt know where to go. Clint (Estelle's mate) had mentioned the MCA hotel in his blog so i offered we should stay there. mikk agreed and as if by coindence a taxi driver pulled up and offered to take us there. He [View Full Entry]

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Dali at last, I’d been hearing so many things about this particular part of China that I was anxious to get here. There has been a debate amongst travellers as to which is the better, Dali or Lijiang. As I have yet to visit the latter I shall have to reserve judgement on this until later. What I can say is I haven’t been disappointed with Dali in the least. The first thing that hits you about Dali is the sheer impossing Jade mountain (Cang Shan) which lingers over the city to the West. To the East but not easily visible [View Full Entry]

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the first stage of our tour of china as a laowai band..... well, it has certainly been a very long time between blogs. what have i done with that time? the answer is, not a lot, spot. i've been mostly staying in kunming, in the flat of the quebec redneck bluegrass project boys, most of whom are currently on tour in india. we've been eating good food, smoking, drinking, and watching shitty dvds. getting new tattoos, piercings, playing music, partying. experiencing all kinds of strange weather - beautiful and sunny one day, half a foot of snow on the ground the [View Full Entry]

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Dali in Yunnan Province [View Full Entry]

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...with a supermarket trolley (U2 1990) 'I'm not getting in that' Alan said, looking at the stuck together with sellotape mini-van, crammed full of smoking people, coughing non-smoking people, luggage, sacks, chickens. I felt for him - the nightclub outside our window had wound down at eight am, and it was now nine am. Imagine Busáras. Now take away the glamour. That was the bus station. 'I want to get on a plane to Bangkok.' He looked so sad, so tired. All he had talked about in the taxi was the five hour sleep he planned on the bus. And now, [View Full Entry]

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Dali... the Old Town's ramshackle old houses and flagstone streets lined with market stalls selling Nakhi skirts and embroidery, blue and white Dali batik, brass jewellery, pipes and the ubiquitous cammo sneakers and Mao hats. This place is well and truly used to tourists: every second cafe in the old town serves western food and has free internet. Little old Bai women come up to us on the street offering "smoke, hash, ganja" at any opportunity, and in fact there seemed to be a ganja touts convention happening at the table next to us at lunch yesterday, a bunch of women [View Full Entry]

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