Avoiding the floods in China

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Sorry for the delay in posting this....internet connections havent been good or we've been too pressed for time!

After the Yangtze River Cruise we stayed in Yichang, a horrible city thats like one giant building site, in a horrible hostel - the only up side being that it was the night of Englands first game in the World Cup so Paul got free beer from the owner as they stayed up until 2am to watch it! The next day, 20 mins before we boarded a train for our 30 hour journey to Kunming (seemed like a good idea at the time!) Sarah got a stomach bug and was throwing up in a bin in the train station (only in China can you do that and no one even blink an eyelid) Luckily it was a 24 hour bug so by the time we arrived in Kunming she was feeling much better and could even look at food again without rushing to the sink!

After a few days rest in Kunming, which was a lovely city but there wasnt much to do but shop which was touture for Sarah as Paul wouldn't allow her to blow the budget on a new wardrobe, we booked a sleeper bus to Shangri La. Now if you've never been on a sleeper bus before - don't do it! The 'beds' are like tiny coffins where even Sarah was nearly too tall to fit on them (shes only 5'2!) And the 16 hour journey took about 20 hours due to the bus having to stop every 30 mins for either food/toilet/smoking breaks which involved all the lights being turned on and everyone shouting so there was no hope of sleeping through the journey....thats without mentioning the bumpy roads as we headed up the mountains!

Arriving in Shangri la was a bit disapointing as it looked like any other China city (only it was cold!) but once we got into the old city our expectations were met. It was a quaint old town where everyone smiled and the locals gathered in the square every night and danced in a big circle. We planned to stay for 3 days but ended up staying for a week - it was great having to wear trousers and jumpers again! We even got to use our wooly hats for the first time when we went up to the top of Blue Moon Valley Mountain.

From Shangri La it was just a quick 2 hour bus ride to Tiger Leaping Gorge which we trekked in 2 days. The views were amazing and well worth the effort - the most differcult part of the treck is called '28 bends', a very steep pathway going uphill, not too sure why it's called 28 bends though as there's at least 40 bends to it! Feeling very tired we then headed to Lijiang, another wonderful old town where you're meant to pay an entrance fee yet we were never asked to. In Lijiang the main streets are packed with chinese tourists and the beer and food is expensive yet go two streets back and they are empty with the beer only costing 8 yuan (about 80p for a large bottle!)

Next on the list of stops was Dali, a very touristy but chilled out town where little old ladies hound you to buy souvenirs or ganja from them - very surreal having an old granny try to sell you a scarf, a toy or a bag of weed! In Dali we hired electrical bikes for the day and went out exploring around a nearby lake called Erhai Hu (translates to ear shaped lake) and went out to a range of peaks called Cang Shan, which was a bit disapointing after Tiger Leaping Gorge as the pathway was litterally a paved pathway from one set of chairlifts to another - not at all like the hike descibed in the Lonely Planet book.

After a quick stop over in Kunming again our last stop before Hong Kong was Yangshuo. Now as many people know this is the town Paul had all his problems in 5 years ago which caused him to go home after only 2 days in China. So to say he was nervous on the bus trip there is an understatement! But once we arrived he realised how much Yangshuo has changed - it's been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a very touristy town with bars and clubs competing with each other and even a McDonalds and KFC along West Street (the main drag). On our secound night we bumped into a couple we met breifely in Xian - Karl and Cathrine. Through them we were introduced to a few expats who owned bars and hotels in the area including a spanish australian called Alf who generously invited us to a lock in in his bar for the world cup final (which started at 2am due to the time difference) and didnt charge us a penny for drinks - he even got out a few bottles of champange when Spain won!....(as a side note its never a good idea to drink champagne at 6am, our heads later on in the day were not good!)

Our week in Yangshuo was like a holiday, we drank with Karl and Cathrine and the others each night and just chilled out by the Li River or hired bikes during the day to explore the countryside. We even did a cooking course and can now make beer fish and Gung Po chicken. The cooking course had a disturbing start though as we went to the local market to collect ingrediants and saw skinned dogs hanging up to be sold (apparently Yangshuo is in one of the few regions where dog meat is still eaten!). The time in Yangshuo was the perfect ending to our first leg of China - due to our visas we had to leave China and go to Kong Kong before we can continue our travels in China.

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Comments

[anneka]

ugh!!
Thanks for the pic of the skinned dog! they are highly disturbing!!!! loving the pics of you cooking! looks like a yummy dish! glad you guys are still enjoying yourselves and i feel your pain with the sleeper bus! definately an experience! lol. in Hong Kong you must go to the toilet restaurant it looks really cool! you sit on toilet seats and eat food out of pretend toilets and squats! ha ha

[anonymous]

that is mean i hate abuse my dog died and i hate 2 think of if she was skinned ALIVE i would find the person who done it and kick there butt

[cabochick]

feel your pain.
Ugh I hate sleeper buses too! And what the heck is with the dog! great blog.