I got so caught up in my excitement for Vietnam, that I forgot I actually had to leave China first. It was pretty much exactly 12 hours before we were supposed to get on a train that I made this realization. I had just been packing up my things for the following travel day when I was like “woah! I'm leaving China tomorrow!”. There were a couple of loose ends I needed to discuss with Tyler so I grabbed a few things and headed down to the common room (where he was having a beer with James from Whales) and told him what I had just realized and needed to talk. We went over the plan for the following day and went through a checklist in our heads to make sure we weren't forgetting anything. Okay! ... read more

We weren't nearly as active in Yangshuo as we had intended. Instead of long hikes along the river, we found ourselves aimlessly walking around Xi Jie (West Street). There were shops of every kind, restaurants with all types of cuisine, and street vendors filling in any gaps that were missed by the other store owners. Fresh donut with chocolate and peanuts drizzled on top? Fresh mango smoothie? Potato chips on a stick? Breaded and fried chicken drumstick? Duck meat wrap? Street food is the best! The majority of the locals spoke English and for once we welcomed the touts for things like bamboo raft rides. Of course we still declined but it was nice to be able to come across a familiar language again. A couple of times we found things we wanted to buy but ... read more

Kunming has been an adventure from the second we left Dali... When we left Dali, we got on the wrong city bus. We wanted to get to the train station and ended up at the bus station. Since we hadn't bought tickets in advance, we were on a bit of a tight schedule so we had to get a taxi to take us across town to the train station. We were able to get train tickets no problem and were super happy to be back on a train instead of those stupid buses (we've had a few rough rides). We arrived in Kunming slightly ahead of schedule (another reason to love the train) and had figured out how to get to the hostel we were looking for. It was going to take two buses but seemed ... read more

October 1st is China's National holiday for which the majority of the country gets an entire week off. During this week, an average of 2.75 million people travel to the province we are currently in, Yunnan. For that reason, we wanted to find a nice little place to avoid the crowds for at least a couple of days. SHAXI Shaxi Village was the perfect place to do it. It's an ancient, dusty, wooden town that still survives from the millenia old Tea and Horse Trail which connected China with India and the rest of the world. This quaint little town has recently received tourism funding from the government. You can see that many renovations are being completed and there are more plans in the works uncluding a new highway which will cut at least half an ... read more

Zhongdian aka Shangri-La is situated at 3200m above sea level; at that height, many travellers experience altitude sickness. We didn't recognize too many side effects of altitude sickness, mostly just shortness of breathe. We slowly worked our way up – from Kangding (2600m) to Xiangcheng (2800m) to Shangri-La (not to mention a few times on the bus over 5000m!) – and that could be what helped us out. Zhongdian was unofficially renamed Shangri-La by the government more than a decade ago, apparently because 'experts' had established with certainty that the area is the location of James Hilton's 1933 bestseller Lost Horizon. However, cynics say it was done to increase tourism since logging in the area was banned. The city is booming so the plan has obviously worked. As we drove into town all we could see ... read more