Sometimes while travelling life hands you a relaxation day, this is ours since there are no buses to the big city until 6.30 pm. Wheres the worry when you can relax on your hotels balcony overlooking terraces, amongst the ducking and diving swallows and the clouds blowing over in vast clumps. Plus for breakfast there is ample egg and bread, oh and purple rice into which is forced 3 tablespoons ofsugar by the half toothed grinning old lady.

The hike up to the main road feeling like a pair of pack horses with all our luggage pretty much describes our only exercise for the day, lucky since the calves are a little tender. We check out our new bus/home for the night, change one of the tickets so we can share a double bunk (a bit too close for strangers) and are surprised by its comfort. Sleep is restricted, a food stop at 1am doesn't help. Actually, I was pretty interested in the grilled smells while waiting for the loo although once Id wretched 3 times in 30 seconds at the stench of the urine all over the floor, just a baby wipe and a snooze would do me fine thanks... Prue was the same.

They say that if you have not seen lake Dian then you havn't seen Kunming. Well for sure we have not seen that city at all, unless you count the bus station view from our bunk while putting off our 4am arrival until a 7am one, batering a mini bus driver down to a sweat over an unknown distance and skirting around the major highways to a different bus station. We brush our teeth before boarding a second long distance bus -another 12 hours- whos driver is possibly Jackie Chans' number one fan; 'Police Story' fans eat your heart out, we got 1, 2 & 3... in Chinese!

Towns, hills, farmland, ass kicking and laughter from all Chinese on board, repeat. There is one factor that stands out as unique on this journey though, all of the antique buildings are decoratedwith mushroom paintings. It takes little time to realise were surrounded by vast shroom farms, and the residents seem keen to rejoice in it. In Yunnan mushrooms of all kinds are growna nd are very cheap in comparison to other provinces.

We have maybe overdone it, sore eyes, tired heads. Theres a lunch stop and we are presented with a silver school dinner tray upon which Chinese dishes (weve managed to communicate vegetarian) are dumped from several wash basins full of food. Some serious mess kitchen they have here. Climbing up and up the clouds started to block our views of the renound Nu Jiang valley.