Tuesday August 22nd We had another early morning bus to Lanzhou but this time we opted for one at 7:30 instead of being sadomasochist and go for the 6:30 one. We nevertheless woke up everyone in the dorm while we packed our stuff except for the israeli girls who were taking a bus to Langmusi. I realized at that point that for the last 2 nights I was the only guy in the dorm with about 6-7 girls. Travel's hard. We bought some local bread and took a rickshaw with the israeli to the bus station. We ate our bread thing [View Full Entry]

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Sunday August 20th Another way-too early morning bus. We said goodbye to Fany and went outside as we heard the bus honking like crazy to warn travellers that he was about to leave (in 30 minutes! better hurry) and wake up the whole town. Our next destination was Xiahe, a town with the biggest tibetan monastery outside Lhasa. Most people who come to Langmusi went to Xiahe before so we knew somewhat what to expect. Most people prefered Langmusi but we decided to give Xiahe a shot anyway. The bus didn't go directly to Xiahe though so we had to transfer [View Full Entry]

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Friday August 18th We knew we had until 8AM to cancel the trek if it was raining, if we didn't do it before that we would have to go even if it rained. It wasn't raining when we woke but it was cloudy, rainy weather. We walked around but decided not to cancel it as we hoped it would get better. We went to Leisha's and I had the shaksooka. This had to be the best breakfast I've had in my life I'm serious this stuff is great. I love it. Our trek starts at 10AM so we killed time in [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday August 15th I managed to wake up in time for the early bus to Songpan despite spending another really bad night. I was feeling slightly (but not greatly) better than the days before so I hoped I was on the way to recovery. My plan for the day was to take the 3 hours bus ride to Songpan and then do nothing except to relax and recover. Songpan is a base for horse trek and contrary to Jiuzhaigou, it is very popular with western tourists but less with chinese ones. I had decided not to do the horse trek there [View Full Entry]

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Sunday August 13th My last night in Chengdu was pretty hard. At around 2AM I woke up in sweat. Electricity was out on the whole floor and I found out that sleeping in Chengdu without a fan is pretty damn hard as the heat is so oppressing. I also realized that my stomach pain had developped in a full-fledge diarhea, but thank god they had a generator going so at least they had lights in the bathroom else I'm not sure how I would've survived. I managed to find some sleep after about an hour and woke up in time to [View Full Entry]

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Thursday August 10th I woke up pretty late again today even though I went to bed early the day before. I guess I needed the sleep. I had some banana pancakes (I love the stuff) and went to the internet cafe. I had a lot of catching up to do on my blog and the previous day hadn't been enough. Writting these blogs takes time and updating pics can be even worse sometimes. I pretty much spent the whole day in that internet cafe, surrounded by kids playing dance games or Counter-strike. I stopped for lunch where I had some cookies [View Full Entry]

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Monday August 7th Our bus was leaving at 7:30 from the bus station which was pretty far away so we woke up pretty early again. The bus was more modern and clean than the one I took to get to Kanding but the drawback was the chinese I was sitting next to. He was big, pushy, sweaty and smelly. He'd sit with his knee on my side of the bench with the legs spread wide and if I didn't put my knee against his to push him he would take even more, which is what happened when I removed my leg [View Full Entry]

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Friday August 4th I won't spend much time describing this day as I did nothing. I woke up late, surfed a bit but was too tired to blog (plus the kids were so annoyingly loud). I went to a "minisupermarket" and bought food for the day, instant noodles as main meal for both lunch and dinner, asked for hot water at the hotel reception and sat around in my room reading my book. I didn't want to do anything that involved me walking for the day. I did some hand laundry of my socks and pants which were just so dirty [View Full Entry]

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Sunday July 30th Our bus left at 7AM so we woke up by 6. As I was brushing my teeth I realized we were not the only ones taking an early bus as 2 swiss girls started talking to me. They were also going to Daocheng. Me and Amit were ready by 6:40 but the israeli girls were still notthere, they were sleeping at another hostel. I took a cabwith the swiss just in case the israeli girls would be late I could tell the bus driver to wait. At the bus station I met Justine and Geoffrey whom I met [View Full Entry]

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Friday July 28th Few words about Zhongdian and this part of China. It is often named Shangri-la in reference to the fabled mountain kingdom of the "Lost Horizon" book written by James Hilton. It is at 3200m of altitude and is the northeast edge of the tibetan world. Tibet you say? Why do you claim to still be in Yunnan then? Well this is because when China decided to create "Tibet", they took away large chunk of it and put it in the neighbouring province. This way northwestern Yunnan, Western Sichuan, Gansu and pretty much all Qinghai (except maybe Xining area) [View Full Entry]

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