Lee and Clare, The road home

Panda-monium

29^th November 2003

We are in our last few days in China now, and have finally found time to sit down and write an email. We have not had such hairy adventures since our last email (you may be happy to hear!). Instead we have spent A LOT of time chilling out and finally managing to get our hands on some great food.

We weren't so happy when we wrote our last email, but really, if a whole town is dug up you can't help but think it's a "hole". After our email we did go for a walk and found that the place wasn't quite so bad and we survived the waterless hotel and a 10-hour bus ride onwards to Chengdu.

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province and very big and modern with upmarket pedestrianised shopping areas and designer shops. This was welcome after spending so long in tiny towns.

In the evening we went to a "Cultural Show" where we saw the best bits out of some traditional Sichuan operas, some big stick puppets that breathed fire, traditional music and a shadow puppeteer. All was very entertaining and we drunk even more green tea.

Then it was on to another province, Yunnan in the far south of China. We can't believe how this country can be so different as you move from area to area. Everything from the people to the vegetation, weather, landscape, towns, and atmosphere.... can change so much. Yunnan is warm and green and the people are so friendly. We no longer get stared at blatantly. Instead people smile and say Nihow or hello to us and some even wave to us as we go past on a bus. Yunnan is also home to one third of China's ethnic minorities, some of which we have come across in the past few days.

Our first stop in Yunnan province, after 24 hours on trains and buses was Lijiang. We really liked this town, as it had a great holiday atmosphere, something like Queenstown in NZ. Some would just say that it's mega touristy, which it is - streams of Chinese tour groups taking photos everywhere, but we just took it for what it was and enjoyed ourselves - after all we are tourists too. It is a completely traditional Chinese town, built in the architectural style of the local Naxi people. There are loads of little alleys with stone pavers, with bridges over little rivers of clean (!) water running through the town. Everywhere was clean and we very rarely heard any hoicking. In case we haven't mentioned it, it seems that every 10 minutes here you hear and see phlegm being brought up from the depths of someone's body and flying through the air. The women are as prolific as the men. And they don't mind where they spit it either - floor of a bus is fine. Not to mention clearing nasal passages. But back to Lijiang. There were very few bogeys on the ground there, or rubbish. There were also lots of great restaurants that sold Western food like lasagne and the best chocolate cakes. And lots of shops too. So we were happy! There was a major earthquake there in 1997 and apparently the Naxi architecture all held up well while the modern buildings were levelled. The government put lots of money into the place and rebuilt it all in the traditional Naxi way and now it's a World Heritage Site.

Michael and us!.

We took 2 days out from relaxation and chocolate cake to go trekking in Tiger Leaping Gorge. It's either the highest or second highest gorge in the world, with rocky, snow capped mountains towering 3900m above the Yangtze River below, almost going up vertically. We took a trail about 1000m above the river and walked the 30km in 2 days. Some very steep climbs and descents were well worth the amazing views as we walked. Not only were there the towering mountains, but also we walked through tiny quaint villages that were accessed only by the mountain path. We walked past people herding goats and old men trudging up the steep hills with baskets of firewood on their backs. We were so excited that the first day was really sunny. We even got sunburnt. It's been months since we felt the sun on our skin! We spent the night at a traditional Naxi style house in the mountains with the most amazing view and zillions of stars in the sky out of our bedroom window. The second day was a bit easier but we had to cross waterfalls, with very sheer drops. It was a fantastic walk, and we're really glad we did it before mass tourism takes hold there and there's a cable car up to the top. At the end of the trek we stopped at a guest house in Walnut Grove where they had the biggest marijuana tree imaginable growing out the front and there was "happy" prefixed to many of the items on the menu. We did the trek with a Canadian girl we met along the way who's learning Chinese.

We are now in Dali Old Town, which is 3 hours south of Lijiang. This is also well known as the place in China for travellers to chill out. We're enjoying our time here, but kind of wish that we could be somewhere a bit more "Chinese" for our last few days in China. They even have a street here nicknamed "Foreigner Street" because there are so many of us who come here. Things are getting a bit warmer now as we're getting further south, but still can be pretty chilly in the shade and at night. There was a power cut here yesterday for the entire day - about 10 hours. It was kinda fun to eat our dinner by candlelight without loud music blaring out in the restaurant. And you'll be happy to know that we've cracked Chinese food again, we really enjoyed our meal last night. I guess Yunnan food agrees with us a bit more than food from Sichuan or Gansu provinces!

We're off to Kunming on a night train tonight and after a day there we are onto another train to the Vietnamese border. It will be exciting to get into a new country after 5 weeks here in China and we are also sooo excited to be meeting up with Lisa, my sister, in Hanoi on Wednesday. She'll be travelling around with us for 6 weeks, so in our next email there will be a new character to report of.

We're off to the post office now to send some stuff home, as our bags are far too heavy. Hope all is good with all our friends all over the world.

Love to hear from you!!

PS. - An update on the toilet situation. We are both well used to squatters now. In fact if you show us a hole, then we will go in it. We would even go for the squatter over a western toilet because you don't have to touch anything. Most toilets these days have no doors, and barriers are only up to your waist. It is also pretty common for toilets to have no barriers at all. You just walk into a room with 5 or 6 holes in the floor and a couple of women going about their business in front of you. You have no choice but to join in. Then there are the ones that have waist high barriers over a long trough. If you are lucky they'll hose the trough out once a day and if you are ESPECIALLY lucky they'll do it while you're squatting over it.