Yunnan Province

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you want bracelets, you want hair-clips, no? You want to smoke the ganger?

We seem to get stared at a lot more here, kiwi gets stared at everywhere because she's a novelty , not many Indians and especially travelers here, but even I'm getting a little creeped out by it.
The train journey was not so bad, managed to sleep through quite a lot and read through even more there were a lot of little children around who had managed to get up the confidence to practice their English with us by the end of it which was sweet, i attempted to practice a little Chinese but didn't get far. The tones are very difficult to grasp and the second you get anything right the start babbling expecting you to understand, tombelding or something along those lines is one of the most useful words = i don't understand.

Kunming

Just reached our hostel which is lovely but the surrounding area's a bit of a let down, we spent the day just chilling out reading and trying to get a bit of a sun tan. Had a walk around but other than a few buildings there wasn't very much to see in the surrounding area.

Dali

So we arrived at Dali this afternoon, there was an entire dead pig in the bottom of the bus where we put our bags, strange! Luckily our hostel is in the old town which is really lovely, much more beautiful. We spent a nerve racking half an hour in the back of a tuktuk which sounded like it was dying, the driver was lovely and offered us a pear when he stopped for a snack halfway through the journey?!
Anyway once we arrived we got a free upgrade because the rooms we'd booked were full, unfortunately we're both sharing with other people but definitely worth it, in the little common room they have chaise longs, leather couch, flat screen TV and all the dodgy dvd's you could want all for 2.50 a night! You know since I've arrived here i have not seen one proper DVD shop but they have lots of dodgy ones.
After checking in we went for a wander in the little streets, most of the stuff was what you'd expect, and i found a post office so will be sending stuff soon, but then we were approached buy old women selling stuff, nothing unusual there and we stuck with thank you and i don't want in Chinese but then they started asking us if we wanted ganger for the equivalent of a fiver. Don't worry we both said no! but nonetheless a very funny encounter.
I'm off to watch a DVD now etc and see who I'm sharing a room with so will update this before i leave Dali!
As it happens I'm staying in Dali an extra couple of days because it's lovely here, check out the back drop to our hostel, we also got proper towels something that i never thought id miss so much even though i have a brilliant travel towel, thanks hev! Tomorrow I'm going to do the cable cars into the mountains and then apparently there's going to be loads of party's everywhere due to the Luna new moon and lantern festival or something, I think it's any excuse for a party personally.
We did another major trek across the mountains the scenery was beautiful but stopped looking at it after a while, more stairs involved but the chairlift up most of the way was a lifesaver. Gareth and Lil some people we met in Hong Kong from Glastonbury turned up the day before yesterday and we went biking down to Erhi lake yesterday, there where only two electric bikes, which Lil and Kiwi had, i ended up on a proper mountain bike which was most probably for the best as i tried out the electric bike at one point and was a little disastrous. So we're still in Dali but actually moving on tomorrow, the place has been so relaxed with such wonderful weather that i just couldn't bring myself to move on.

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Photos

Cramped!
18 hours in this was a very long time!!

Mountain view
We were practically the only tourists on the entire mountain we only saw about 3 others sets for the entire journey.

Day to work on the tan
This City might not be brilliant but we have a lovely rooftop terrace, sun and a book, perfect

Kiwi on rooftop terrace
In the Kunming hostel

Street Food
Meat on sticks actually tastes lovely, and only around 20p a stick

A bin
There were loads of these really ornate bins everywhere

The base of the mountain
When they say trek here they mean stairs and this was just the beginning

View from the cable car
It went so high it made my ears pop

Giant marjong
Couldn't lift them, we tried

Me and kiwi on the top of the mountain
We really did get there :) ok granted most of the way was cable-car

Overhanging rocks
The signs warning us of rock falls weren't very helpful either, the chinglish on signs here is awful.