2 weeks in China

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Well it been a while since I updated the blog. Sorry if you live through my writings.. I mean I feel sorry for you.
We have had a lot of great times in the last two weeks. We went form Dali to Lijiang which is about 3 hours north. Lijiang is a wonder old city that is a huge Chinese tourist draw, tour groups started at around 10 AM and once they were in the old town it was hard to move around the beautiful old cobble stone streets. We headed north of Lijiang (2 hours by bus) to Tiger Leaping gorge we brought along light packs for the two day hike trough the gorge. First day we started all bundled up but after about 2 hours of hiking the rain stopped and we had to lose some layers. We went down to the river at the bottom of the gorge, and then blazed new trail to get up to the main path that runs about half way up the mountain side. We lost the trail but were able to use animal trails to get up to the path. We hiked up about 1000 meters to the guest house at roughly the half way point of the 16km trail. Very basic accommodation but after the hike I slept like a baby.. Also they had fresh picked oyster mushrooms, which they used to make the best tasting mushroom soup I have ever had. When we got back to Lijiang we had a fish hot pot and with some amazing Shittake mushrooms.. Yunnan has amazing mushrooms. Got a little off track there.. Second day we did another 8 hours of hiking.. the views were amazing and the weather work with us to make this one of the highlights of the trip... It also wore us out. Next we headed back to Dali and then the next day to Kumming to catch a flight to Guangzhou (just west of Hong Kong).
We spent 3 days in Guangzhou at Christine's uncles place.. We relaxed watched DVD's and ate great food, built back up our energy to travel.
Next we headed over to Hong Kong to see the city and visit Christin's Aunt. Wow when you get back in to a modern city you realize how little you have been spending. Needless to say Hong Kong was a great experience, so alive and beautiful.
We are now in Yangshuo which 10 hours north west of Hong Kong.. which trough an over site of mine took a extra day to get to... I had asked for a multiple entry visa, but I got a 2 entry visa.. Always look over your visa, I learned the hard way. We spent one night in Shenzhen (which you can get a visa for on the spot, but you can not travel to the rest of China). The next day I went with a group of 30 others to get a new China visa.
Yangshuo, has some amazing scenery. There are about 20,000 of the of these karsk hill things, and they can leave you dizzy, or perhaps that was the lack of oxygen going to my brain, as I was on a bike. You had to keep your eyes on the dirt road too, or you could find yourself sliding into a muddy ditch, or crashing into a rock and going head-over-heels off your bike and head butting a water buffalo. What got really annoying was the touts trying you to get you to ride on a bamboo raft down the river, looks like it would be fun but we didn't want to today. I must have heard "Hello bamboo" a hundred times. For the last time my name is not Bamboo. All in all we have been having a great time.
Cheers John
P.S. what's with the Mighty Ducks.. I hate them.

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