goodbye China (at least for now)

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well

Tomorrow we get on a 27 hour sleeper bus bound for Luang Prabang, and it's goodbye China, at least for now.

Kunming pulled out all the stops to entice me to stay. The weather's great, the air in this city is clear, there's great people around and a whole universe full of fantastic cheap street food. We met a very nice Chinese girl called Ju who told us we can save time and cash by taking a bus that goes express to Laos from Kunming, saving us several seperate long trips and overnights in small towns on the way. NOt that I mind the small towns, but getting on a bus in one city and waking up in another country is pretty appealing. As well as having the comfort of lots of Chinese people on the bus that I can sort of talk to, as opposed to getting into Laos and trying out a brand new language first thing.
So by Wednesday night I'll be in Luang Prabang, eating the Laos version of Som Tum and hopefully having a relaxed Beer Lao.

In the meantime, lots has happened. While Dali may have seemed on the surface to be bad for my health, it was also a lot of fun. We met a Dutch squatter-activist and tried to climb Zonghe Shan, but were turned back but the hefty fee and lack of packed lunch. We learned to play Jenga. We learned to swear better in Chinese. We got offered drugs by middle-aged Bai ladies. We saw mobs of people returning from the foothills with bunches of freshly harvested ganja. We punished our livers (Ben's fault) slept til lunchtime ate lots watched bad movies.

Fungalhorse played its first paid gig in China, and also its second unpaid gig. The first was at the DaliBa, infamous vodka bar of Dali. We got there first, and tried to avoid drinking too much vodka before the show. Our first set was a little nervous, and somewhat difficult as we had no PA. But still, lots of fun and we busted out James' pirate song, a bunch of Fungalhorse favourites and a brand new cranking gypsy tune we'd written that afternoon, hopa!
A little later, and a lot of vodka and pijiao later (thanks to Kevin from Hong Kong, and the unnamed Tibetan tour guide) and after a gentle request from a bunch of Israelis who'd missed the first set, we got up again. THis time we were louder and somehow tighter, or it could have been the gypsy mosh pit that started from the first chord. yeah.

On the back of that strange drunken miracle came the offer from KaiKai, part owner of the 50 Bowls bar a little further down the road, to play again the next night. This time we'd have a PA, and even some flyers. Pretty funny really, so Mick scribbled up some flyers and away we went. We played a quieter set first with a couple of nods to Fungalhorse's many arms (James, Jess, Mick, kt, Tegan songs all played) as well as our new Donovan cover and our favourite new FUngalhorse Gypsy tune. yeah. Ben did manage to record some of it, but I can't work out how to upload the movie file into a usable form, so hold your horses on that one.

It was a bruised looking Fungaltrio that found its way onto the bus to Kunming the next morning at 9.
The trip to Kunming was pretty good, and too soon it was time to leave Mick at the train station, heading back to Hong Kong. He's threatening to book some more gigs for us, in order to entice us back to Chengdu.

We spent our first day in Kunming washing what's left of our clothes and watching bad bad awful Bruce Willis movie at the hostel. why.
Yesterday we met a German guy called Andreas who's cycled to Kunming from Germany, via Turkey and all the central asian 'Stans. We also met an Canberran named Jonathon who hooked us up with Ju and the bus ride to Luang Prabang. We drank some beer (Dali's finest. cheers). We ran into the same Israeli guys from Dali. it's a small world.

Zaijian, China. see you soon.

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Photos

kt, Ju and Echo in Kunming
after happy happy time at Food Street