Tiger Leaping Gorge-Yunnan, China

We left our gear at the hostel in Lijiang and packed our small day bags and caught a bus for 2 hours to Qiaotou to start a trek in the Tiger Leaping Gorge. It is one of the deepest gorges in China on the Yangtse river- almost 4,000 metres from the top of the mountains to the river below, and over 20 metres wide at its narrowest point.

We stayed at a Tibetan style Guest House along with about 30 other westerners all wanting to do the same walk. We got a map and up-to-date information on the trail and headed out early the next morning in the mist.

We stopped after 2 hours at a small Naxi -the local tribe- village for breakfast.

You can always have rice, eggs and noodles anywhere.

We had to climb up 900 metres and Lil made it with only 3 stops!

We spent a night at a guest house that Michael Pallin visited in one of his TV travel stories- it had a loo with a view! I'm sure it was cleaner for him than for us. We walked with Mette and Christine from Denmark on our final day. The green leafed plant was in the flower box behind them in this photo.

Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China

From our Guest House dining room we are able to look over the old city of Lijiang. The modern city has KFC, Pizza Hut, Jeans West etc. Lijiang was flattened by an earthquake in 1996 and has been rebuilt in the traditional manner and style. It is now a World Heritage Site so it is very popular with Chinese tourists. They outnumber the westerners!

On the top of the hill we visited a temple where these paving stones were in the courtyard. The Chinese character for bat is like the word for good luck and the circular pattern is the symbol for long life.
In a restaurant we had a cold drink and these girls in traditional costume danced for us.
The weather here has been mild and we are enjoying it. In the distance we can see a mountain with a little snow on top.

We have had a lot of problems with our email password since arriving in China and had to ring NZ ihug twice. We hope it doesn't happen again. We can now post on our blog but we cannot read it so please excuse us if we repeat anything as we can't look at what we have already posted.The hostel provides free internet. We are getting better at managing the programmes when all the instructions are in Chinese characters!

Stone Forest- Yunnan, China

From Kunming we caught a minibus to the Stone Forest Park. It is a huge area covered with large stones in a well laid out parklike setting.The guides dress in traditional clothes. The maps around the place are not very informative so you are encouraged to take a guide so you don't get lost.

We met two foreigners who had not taken a guide and were lost for 2 hours and found themselves going around in circles in the blazing sun! They were relieved to bump into us. We didn't take a guide but hooked on to the tail end of a Spanish speaking group from Spain. As we spoke English they didn't take any notice of us, so we got a free tour!

Dali - Yunnan Province, China

Moved on from Kunming to Dali. China is a real surprise for us. We had no expectations when we crossed the border but have found the cities very modern with good infrastructure, transport systems have been excellent, some of the motorways up with the best, accomodation good, food good and the locals friendly. Also very cheap, cheaper than Thailand and Laos. We would recommend Yunnan as a tourist destination for the adventurous with a phrasebook!

Old Dali was rebuilt in its former glory in 1998 and is a fabulous tourist city within the old city walls. The place has a lot of history with the area falling to Genghis Khan in the 13th century. Historians have found fragments of human teeth dating back 2.5 million years ago in this area. Talking of teeth, one of these photos shows a local dentist doing an extraction in the market place!

Most of the tourists are Chinese with just a few foreigners. As the Chinese are becoming more affluent they are really taking to local tourism. There are hordes of them. They have a leader in the front with a coloured flag for all to follow and a sherriff at the rear chasing along the stragglers.

Language is a bit of a problem for us. Lil's Chinese is getting better by the day and our Lonely Planet (LP) guide book is our " bible ". All of the cities, hotels, restaurants and attrations are written in the LP in Character, so we just show the book to the locals and they point us in the right direction. The teenagers are the best to ask for help as they sometimes practice their limited English on us.

So travelling is relatively easy and as Dali is around 1950 metres above sea level the temperatures are cooler than nearer the coast. Around a pleasant 25 Deg. during the day.

In the evenings the local Bai population come into the old City to sing and dance and entertain the crowds. There are a few photos of this attached. Above Dali is a paved walkway of 12 kms so took a chairlift to the start and a gondola down to the bottom. Had a great view of the lake where they use cormorant birds for fishing.

Kunming

Arrived in Kunming a couple of days ago and stayed at a place called 'The Hump' - named after the 1946 airlift of supplies from India to China over the Himalayas by the US Airforce. When we went to our room we found free earplugs! Turns out the rooms were in the middle of a bar and nightclub area. They assured us it would be quiet after 2.00am!

We lasted the night and moved out to Cloudlands Youth Hostel. They were full but we found a really nice hotel across the road and have been able to use restaurant and internet facilities at Cloudlands.

Kunming is the capital city of Yunnan Province with a population of four million. Most Chinese live in high rise appartments and most of the old ones have been pulled down and replaced with modern dwellings. There is so much construction under way in all of the country we have seen - buildings, roads, bridges and viaducts. China is so much more modern than we envisaged.

Arrived in Kunming on the weekend of International Children's Day so there were lots of activities around the city. There is a central plaza and lots of pedestrian streets and they were full on the weekend- full of locals, Chinese tourists, food vendors, musicians, kite flyers etc. - it was wonderful. The city has a fabulous bus system. The buses come along every few minutes and you can travel anywhere in the network for one yuan( about 20 cents ).

Have met lots of other travellers here at Cloudlands and will leave with lots of recommendations of places to stay etc. as we move on to Dali City, Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Kerri, look what we found!

Simao, Yunnan-China

We have been unable to get into our blog since arriving in China - until today! We don't know why but have heard from some other travellers that they have had the same problems with their blogs!

Took a short bus trip from the border town of Mengla to Simao. Simao is not in our guide book so we took a gamble to visit it as we didn't want a really long bus trip. We arrived at an enormous bus station that was brand new. In fact most of the city looked brand new. We managed to find a hotel by looking for a reception area with some clocks that are set to the different times of the major cities around China. All the signs are in characters so we can't read them and nothing is in English unless it is in a tourist area. Found a lovely new, clean hotel with giggly staff who found it a novelty to have foreigners.

The city is in a tea growing area and famous for its tea. We took a long time to find an internet shop and found that the locals didn't understand the word for internet as written in our phrasebook. We had better luck with the word 'email'. There are dozens and dozens of computer games shops but few internet places. The locals love to say hello and the children wave but they don't know any more English than that.

June 1st was International Children's day and we sat in the local square and watched the children go by. They were all dressed up in beautiful clothes with gifts that had been bought for them. The local stores were promoting goods for children like baby formula and other baby food. There were the usual bouncy castles and other entertainment attractions.

A young Australian came by and walked up to us and said "What are you doing here?" He had been a year in Simao teaching English in the High School as part of his GAP year (a year between finishing school and then starting university). He said there were only 4 foreigners in the city - we saw three of them walk by- and he said tourists just never go to Simao. We were able to find out that the city had two names, Puer and Simao. He pointed us to the best sit down restaurant in town and told us how he taught 1000 students a week! He had 70 kids in each class and had never had any teaching training at all. I was most impressed with him. He is going to return to Melbourne and study teaching at university!

While in Jinghong we met 4 groups of cyclists travelling to various parts. While sitting in the square at Simao we bumped into 3 of the cyclists- a Belgian, a German and a Swiss. That was a real shock for Simao as we went to the local restaurant. A Chinese girl saw us having difficulty ordering food so she stepped in and translated

for us. We had a feast!

Below the restaurant was a concert of local childrens' singing and dancing groups, so we were entertained as well!

By the way, the sign means - Keep your valuables under your pillow.

Yunnan, China

Had difficulty confirming if we could pick up a visa for China at the Boten, Laos-Mohan, China border but decided to give it a go. Got a "special visa" according to the policewoman at the visa office. It took a long time to process and the bus we were travelling on had to continue without us. Being a weekend day the bank was not open to change money so the policewoman referred us to the street moneychangers. That was not something we were expecting to happen in China.
Found a bus to Mengla about 70 kms from the border and spent a few days there getting the feel of the place. The guide book referred to only one hotel in the city and said it was uphill from the bus terminal but the bus station we arrived at was no where near a hill so we walked towards the busiest part of town looking for a hotel. We finally found a place that had only Chinese characters on it but we spotted a photoboard of beds and saw 3 wall clocks set at different times.Mengla is not a tourist city so they do not cater for westerners. The staff got good at reading the phrases from my phrasebook and translating the Chinese characters I had copied to make sentences about what we wanted.
We were next to a big square where the local retired folk did Tai Chi to a crackly loud speaker. As we sat and watched some of the locals would come and speak to us. A few knew some words of English but many just yabbered to us in Mandarin and we didn't understand a thing! They were very friendly and it was such fun!
The road from Laos to Yunnan is very rough because the Chinese are building a huge highway to take goods through Laos and Thailand to Singapore. There are millions of rubber trees being grown where opium used to be and the road is to get the latex and other goods to all points on the highway - an incredible project!