After a freezing night in Lijiang (with no heating and a draughty room), we decided to leave as soon as possible. This fixed our schedule for the rest of our time in China so we booked hotels and buses for the following day. We then spent the rest of the day looking round Lijiang. First Mr Mu's house and garden (he was a tribal chief but the house had been restored following an earthquake). The house was OK and the gardens pleasant enough - the outstanding things...

Today it is Fran's birthday and we were off hiking through Tiger Leaping Gorge. The trip started at 7:20 with a pick up from our hotel. We had booked a small group hike along the gorge and it turned out to be very small - just us and the guide. We stopped a couple of times on the way to the gorge - once to look over the Yangtze river as it comes out of Tibet and a second time to see the first bend of the Yangtze. Both views were spectacular - especially at that t...

We were off to Lijiang today so were up early to pack for the morning bus. The bus was supposed to be full size with 30 seats but it turned out to be a 16 seat minibus so it was a bit cramped - good job it was not full. The route took us along the lake, then up into the mountains with splendid views. We arrived after about 3.5 hours in Lijiang. Being confused as to where in Lijiang we were, we got a taxi to the hotel - this took all of 3 minutes with 2 of them ex...

The train to Dali turned out to be different - it was a double- decker train that was fairly new. We got on it and couldn't find our compartment - the ticket said No 3, but somebody quickly turfed us out of berth 3 and also cabin 3. We then found VIP suite 3 which was ours which had a double bed and a single bed at 90degrees to it. We thought the ticket was expensive! We had a good nights sleep apart from the conductor waking us up an hour early and then waking u...

Today was our last in Yangshuo as we were on the train to Kunming. We decided to have a look round the town as we hadn't seen much of it. Given we had lots to buy for the train trip, this turned into a shopping trip. We paid a quick visit to the local market - the vegetables looked good and we could identify most of what we had been eating. The fish and meat section was not so pleasant - lots of live chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits and a few dogs - some were in t...