The Great Kunming Bus Extravaganza

---

It's been a quiet day today on this, our last full day in China. We had a lie-in this morning and then popped into the hotel travel office to book our bus tickets to Hekou on the Vietnamese border. It cost us a staggering 112 Yuan each for the 8-hour journey, which works out at just £8 - how cheap is that? And we've been led to believe that Vietnam will be even cheaper than China so hopefully we'll be able to claw back some of the overspending we had to do in Japan.

We were due to meet up with David and Ashley again this afternoon but only David was able to make it. Rather than traipse around hunting for a guide book for Vietnam in English which we were highly unlikely to find, we set a new course for the computer district where Glynn and David got to geek out in spectacular fashion. Afterwards David took us to a giant book store just on the off-chance they had what we were looking for. There were plenty of exam revision guides and English study courses but no travel books to be found, even in Chinese language.

David confessed that he had a hot date with a girl tonight so we offered to let him get home earlier than planned to give him enough time to tart himself up. Alas David possesses about as good a sense of direction as I do and we ended up jumping on and off buses all over the place and ende up miles from the stop we all needed! Eventually we ended up somewhere within a 20 minute walk of our hotel and we left David to go and practise some of the new phrases Glynn had taught him throughout the day. I won't repeat any here but let's just say it's not the sort of stuff you'd learn in class! It was funny to hear David trying out the words and even funnier to watch the penny drop as he realised what kind of inappropriate language he was learning!

We're back at the hotel now and are settling down for a chilled evening with a few beers and a movie. We'll be on the sleeper bus tomorrow evening from 7.30 pm and neither of us expects to catch more than 40 winks on board. We've never travelled this way before so we have no idea what to expect other than there's no toilet on board so you have to go at the stations where the bus stops en route - nice - I just hope I can keep my legs crossed for long enough!! So I guess the next blog will be coming to you live and direct from part 3 of our world tour. Vietnam, here we come!

---