DJ Stu, Landslides, Egg&Tomato and Fancy Dress

So.......
Lhasa...off we all headed to Tang Club (no lie it was called Tang) and Stuey rocked the place! We turned up and they were playing some rather slow Chinese pop (think backstreets boys Chinese style) and I was a tad worried that the floor would clear apart from us when Stuey sped things up but the locals loved it too, the floor was rammed! Stuey played for about an hour and a half and he was in his element! It was a wicked night! Everyone had a good time and I must say there was a few sore heads on the truck the next day!

We then moved on to our dreaded 6 days of bush camping. I must say I smelt a tad bad at the end of it but it was actually really good fun! The days passed fairly easily (we discovered the joys of UNO!) and the scenery was stunning! Absolutely stunning. On day four I think it was we had a slight problem when we came across a slightly large landslide. The road was buried and we couldn't get the truck through due to a big boulder being in the way. So what did we do?! Broke it in two! It was good fun everyone came together to clear the area and Dave in particular was loving it getting in there with a sledge hammer! It took us a couple of hours and with some help from a few locals a route was cleared and the legend that is Steve drove the truck through!

We finally reached a small town that you could trek into Tiger Leaping Gauge from. I decided not to trek, the weather was really bad and to be completely honest I wanted a good sleep. I had woken up in a huge puddle that morning, trekking through mud and rain wasn't my cup of tea! So I stayed in a nice little hotel and had cheesy beans on toast whilst watching 'Hot Fuzz' in a cafe run by an Australian lady called Margo. I even had Wheatbix for brekkie! Tip top!

We then moved onto Laijaing which is a world heritage site for it's old town. Tiny little streets with little canals running through it. It was an interesting city with the juxtaposition of old and new. The new city is just how I imagined China to be, big wide streets, shed loads of people complete with a KFC! (I had to go). Also to my absolute delight I found the new Harry Potter book! I'm trying not to race through it (two people have already finished!). On our second night in Lijiang we had our fancy dress party that we have been buying outfits for since pakistan. And what a night. The hostel did a BBQ for us which we had in their restaurant overlooking the old city and we all looked crackers! I have some rather good pics to add soon! (I want to add so many pictures but it often takes an age to load them up because of Internet speed so please bear with me.) After dinner we all headed into town in full fancy dress to the English Bar. We had to cross one road to get to the pub and stopped the traffic when we crossed. The Chinese must have thought we were mad. Another wicked EOE night!

We're now in Dali our last Chinese town and my last chance to eat fried egg and tomato with rice. (My favourite dish!) Dali is an interesting little traveller's town, there is lots of western food in the restaurant lining 'Foreigner's Street' including the best carrot cake I've had in ages!

Laos is next......

Lots of love from Nicole xxxx