hello again, that damn alarm clock went off at 5:30 this morning! after getting to sleep quite late, due to me sleeping on top of a night club, i could have thrown the alarm clock out the window and very happily gone straight back to sleep, but i had a bus to catch. i was put on the first row of the bus, this means a dead ass after about 20 minutes and 12 hours of not being able to stretch my legs. sat next to me was a very tired monk. the bus filled up and we were off, and sure enough, 20 minutes had gone and i was already rubbing my ass to try and get some life back into it. again, the scenery on the way was absolutely beautiful. going over huge mountains, driving beside rivers and forests as far as the eye can see in every direction. i really don't know which bus ride scenery i like the most. the road from ganzi to dege was out of this world when we were driving thorugh the mountains and the snow. the road between litang and daocheng was fantastic with the great little villages in the mountains and the feeling of driving on the roof top of the world. and then there is the road i have just taken from daocheng to zhongdian, as i said, huge mountains and the most beautiful forests in these huge valleys, i just can't decide! a few things happened on my latest little bus ride that made me smile. firstly, the very tired monk who was sat next to me on the front seats, funnily enough, feel asleep. i didn't take much notice untill he started to sleep on my shoulder, so every so often when his head ame to rest on my shoulder i'd, gentley, give him a little nudge in the other direction. at one point i was reading my book, not playing much attention to anything else when we turned a sharp corner. it was to late to save him. i tried to catch the monk, but he slid off the seat and went flying down the stairwell and went crashing into the bus door. the bus stopped and everyone went to help him, he got up and said something in chinese i think along the lines of: "i'm ok, i'm ok, don't worry i'm fine". after finding out he was ok i had a bit of a chuckle to myself. he must have been so embarresed! i finished my book about 3 hours into the ride, john grisham 'a time to kill', great book! so i passed the time by looking out the window. our madman of a driver tried to overtake a lorry on the narrowist of narrow dirt tracks when there was pretty much a vertical drop to the side! this dirt track didn't have enough room for 2 shopping trolleys to pass each other let alone a bus and a truck!! next we stopped for water to wash the bus and put some water in the bus. a cool little kid came out with the hose and the driver started saying something, the rest of the passengers started laughing so i can only assume he was making fun of the small kid. as we drove off the women sat at the front on the other side of the bus started to scream, the little guy was outside spraying water through the open windows of the bus!! the people with their windows open got soaked!! we drove off and had a good laugh at the wet passengers, who took it as a good bit of fun. today has been very relaxing. i woke up at my lesiure, which was still at 7am, and casualy got ready, went to the bus station and booked a tictet to lijang. the bus was leaving in 30 minutes. in the bus station i met a guy who said lijang was rubbish and i should head straight for dali, one thing i've learned for this travelling lark is not to listen to anybodies views on a place, just get there and make up your own mind. the bus ride was pretty uneventful compared to yesterdays. it took just 5 hours to get to lijang which is probably the shortest trip i've had for about 3 months so that was really nice, it was still like riding a roller coaster, but it was a short roller coaster. the only thing that got to me was the constant littering. every 20 minutes or so someone would throw a plastic bottle or a news paper or something else out the window of the bus and i'd just mumble to myself 'idiots! don't you know what your doing?' but other than that it was a pretty easy ride. on the way to lijang i was expecting the worst, so when i got here i got a nice surprise, yes it's built up but it's not to bad and i was heading straight to the old part of town anyway away from the big shopping area. when i arrived at the old part of town i was plesently surprised, it's like pingyao crossed with yangshuo. beautiful old streets with cool buildings and a nice little stream running through the middle of town. as i walked towards the old town i was ambushed by an old lady and her grand daughter, they took me to their hotel to show me the room. it was good for 20 kwai, nice little place with the stream running by the side of it and it has a shower!! after a shower and a shave, and finaly pulling the bad thumb nail off, i walked around the old town. the place is really nice, a bit over priced but you have to expect that from a tourist town. the streets are full of shops selling clothes, braclets and cakes. it's really chilled out here so i'm gonna stay for at least a couple of days. i'm writing this journal from a guest house looking out to a cool square where there are loads of people chilling out and enjoying thereselves, and i'm also drinking beer which has started to take effect now so i better stop talking rubbish and be off. celien dion has come on twice and i'm afraid my ears are about to bleed!! whilst writing my journal last night i met a girl who was born in paulton, the village next to me back home, she no lives in leeds, which is where i went to college. it's a small world afterall! after meeting her and her sister they invited me to dinner. we went to a small place down the little old streets of lijang, a pretty cool place which has a dvd player and a book swap so i'll be taking advantage of that before i leave. we sat down orderd our food and picked a film to watch which was 'spun', i was happy, it had britney murphy in it! we invited 2 english guys to join us, cool guys. it's weird seeing this many westeners in one place, after a month in western sichuan i only saw about 6 other westeners, but it's nice. this morning i went back to the place we had food the night before to have some breakfast and look at the collection of books with a clear head. and there it was, stareing right at me, porrige!! i had to have it! really good as well, i'll be going back for more tomorrow. after having breakfast i was in no rush, i decided i'd just have a chill out day and casually walk around the old city, so i sat in the resturant and read a couple of chapters of my new book 'harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban'. i walked into a few shops and just started looking around, not intending to buy anything, just looking. i spotted this chinese girl on her own and we smiled at eachother, didn't think anything of it because i smile at everone untill we saw eachother again and again we exchanged looks and smiles. it was for about 20 minutes till she came up to me and introduced herself. i'll never be able to pronounce her chinese name let alone spell it, but it sounds like heidi so we'll call her heidi from now on. she told me that she was a tour guide in training and that she had only been in lijang for 3 days and she would be willing to show me around what she knew and at the same time practise her english. we had a really good day. she showed me around a load of little back streets which i wouldn't have seen if i was on my own, but saying that i don't think she knew exactly where she was either! she took me too the mufu temple complex which was really beautiful. some really nice gardens and buildings. we met some cool monks aswell who assumed we were together and heidi got all embarresed. after mufu we went to lion mountain which had some really amazing views of the old town. looking down on all the roof tops was amazing. we walked back through mufu and back into the old streets. on the way back we walked by some local woman getting rather heated with a westener. as we walked by the local woman spat and hit the westen woman, the western woman was in shoch and stayed quiet, probably for the best the local woman would have tore her limb from limb, a load of shouting came from the local women and the westener, quite smartley, walked away and went into her hotel. fireworks over! heidi and me went for a drink where we discused what we would do for the rest of the day, in very broken english and with some considerable help from the phrase book. we decided to go to the park. enroute we bumped into her friends from school, they wanted to join us so we went back to where they all live and they got there guide passes which entiltled them to discount on enterance to the park. when we got to the park we discovered that the enterance fee was crazy money and it started to piss down! we wated out side the park for a while for the rain to settle down and it turned into a thunder storm. 30 minutes had passed before it got light enough to walk back to the hotel, i said godbye to her friends and she walked me back to my hotel because she had an umbrella. we arranged to meet for drinks later. holy s***, i'm already 15 minutes late in calling her. last night turned out to be pretty crap! heidi was nice enough to take me out to dinner in the new city. we went to a place that was cheep and cheerful, we both had some sort of noodles, i have no idea wht i had because heidi orderd it for me. the wasn't all that bad but i could have been better. after the food we were both stuffed and very tired. we walked around the old town for a while which was nice, but with my considerable lack of chinese and heidi's lack of english we quickly went through the phrase book, which is a shame because she was a cool girl and i would of loved to get to know her a little better. today, after yesterday, i decided to have a very quiet and relaxed day. i woke up and went and had my porrige at 'well bistro' and read some more of my book, after that i had a casual stroll around the old town most of which i saw yesteday but it was still very nice. i walked into the new city becaise i saw a t-shirt yesterday that was quite nice and bought it. back in the old city i went to 'the tibet cafe' of lunch where i had a gorgeous pizza and read more of my book and tried to update my web site with pictures of my sichuan trip which has gone quite well for china standards, as i said it was a very relaxed day. after the pizza i got a taxi to the bus station to book my bus ticket to dali for tomorrow. i walked back from the bus station to see some of the new city, the old city is much nicer. getting back to my room i find out that the owners have put there son into my room, i wouldn't usually bother me but i'm sure it's because the chinese girl 'heidi' turned up at the hotel last night and the owners didn't like it, and they still charge me for the whole room, the woman owner does look like a right b**** though!! speak to you all soon. christopher