Hello again, after spending a night in the hole that is zoige it was onto maerkang for a couple of nights, and by this time itai and me have picked up someone else for a couple of days, her name is helena and she's from essex. cue the essex girl jokes! on the bus ride here i felt as rough as a badgers arse, not sure if i wanted to throw up or soil myself. believe me it's a tough choice! after driving through some pretty crap roads (more like tracks than roads) and finaly getting here i didn't want to do anything other than sleep so i had 40 winks which lasted about 3 hours. waking up i still didn't feel to special and i knew out of the 2 options from earlier i would be choseing, next stop the medical kit to find me some immodium! a quiet night in playing card game and an early night i think. the next morning i woke feeling pretty good. it doesn't look there is much to do in maerkang so we went off to a small village a few kilometers out side of the city called zhuokeji. this little village is a really cool place, it's a small village with mountains surrounding it with a river running by the side of it, and it was also a place that chairman mao stayed during the long march. before we knew it we were being invited into someones house for a bit of food and some hot milk. outside we walked around the village taking pictures of the kids playing around and the buildings which look like there about to fall over at any minute. even though this village is really nice it is still quite small so a few hours was enough there, so it was back to the hotel to pack ready for the bus ride for danba tomorrow, another 6am start! cheers all, speak soon. christopher