We woke up in the beautiful grounds of the National Botanic gardens, so it seemed appropriate to have our simple brekafast fare (juice, fruit, bread) outside under some palm trees and next to a small lake. We strolled around for the morning taking in the weird and the wonderful of the Chinese plant world. Our earlyish start was useful as the hordes of Chinese tourists were only starting to descend as we headed off in the early afternoon. Some comedy logisitcs in...

Our trek started relatively early (or, at least, we were at our start point at 0830 but for a variety of logistical and breakfast reasons we were only on the road at 0930). We then got further delayed when our public bus ran into more Chinese roadwork tomfoolery. Really! Highways Agency of China - sort your act out! When you have a set of traffic which is stopped, spraying wet tar onto the gap in the road between the stationary traffic does not seem destined to h...

Our bus journey was pleasantly uneventful. The Chinese sleeper bus consisted of 3 rows along the bus, each with a 'top' and a 'bottom'. In terms of space, let us simply say that A-M fitted in snugly. The bus was pretty quiet and spitting seemed to be at an acceptable minimum. We found ourselves a tolerable hotel (though Dave flooded the hallway, and A-M found that the ad-hoc electrics in the bathroom gave her a mild electric shock) and then potter...

Greetings from Dali. We arrived from Lijiang in good time to book into the MCA hostel in reasonable time (ie in daylight). The journey had been very interesting as we had (fianlly) arrived in the kind of rural China that you might expect (hand tilled fields, piles of manure deposited on the hard shoulder of the road, crops being cut by hand, etc). Out to explore for the evening, we discovered Dali to be along much the same lines as Lijiang - cobbled streets,...

We spent a very enjoyable couple of days in Lijiang in south west China. Like England in general, or London, the prettiest bits of China appear to be in the south west. Lijiang has lovely cobbled streets and small streams running through most of them. It was the most 'charming' place we have been to in China so far, and at last we seemed to be away from all the smoke and smog. We decided to split up for the morning and A-M wandered the streets whilst...