It was exciting both to leave for China and to be going on our first night train of the trip. We arrived at the train station and were sent walking over about seven sets of train tracks, there were hundreds of people crossing the tracks and it looked like a scene from a film with hundreds of escaping refugees. Our cabin was great, we had four beds in the small room, the other two were empty until 2am when two Vietnamese blokes woke us up with their loud voices and boozy breath.....we got them back in the morning when we woke them up at 6am!

The border crossing was interesting, it began with us being ripped off for a taxi from the train station to the Vietnam exit border a mere 2km down the road and continued with the entrance to China border being consumed by suspicious glances from the officials wondering if we dare attempt to sneak in.....no, not drugs but a lonely planet guide, heaven forbid! We made it through unscathed avec lonely planet and walked a few minutes through Hekou town to the bus station and waited an hour or so before hopping on a bus to Yuanyang. We were the only westerners on the bus so we were stared at the whole way. It was great looking at a new country for the first time again, we immediately compared it to Bolivia due to the vast rolling mountains, the heavy colourful outfits worn by the local women, the long thick plaits that hang down their backs and the banger vehicles weaving their way up and down the mountain passes at high speeds. The area we're going to are famous for their rice terraces, we saw a few on the way and they look pretty awesome.

Our bus was pretty grim to say the least, we rode the chicken bus which literally means you share the bus with farmyard animals....smelly! Also, it's perfectly acceptable to smoke and ALL the Chinese men seem to do so, there was no point on our 6 hour bus where someone wasn't lighting up next to us which is pretty rank when you're trying to sleep. The journey seemed to go through a variety of smell phases. At first we could smell burning wood from the pine forests, then the chickens began to emanate their particular aroma and as the mist lifted from the hills and the sun slowly warmed up the bus and it's contents our nostrils were offended with a stinking smelly hot feet stench. Combine this with the packets of cigarettes and the noise of people hocking up flem and spitting it out of the window we started to feel a bit dirty and smelly.

Anyway, six hours later we arrived in the town of Xinjie. A local lady jumped on the bus and practically threw us in a taxi who drove us to her husbands guesthouse. It's damp and cold and has a squat toilet with the shower hanging over it but it's £5 a night, has spectacular views over the Yuanyang Rice Terraces and it's private so it's good enough for two nights. We went for a wander, (this took about ten minutes to cover the whole village) we hadn't eaten for almost 24 hours so were determined to find some food. We couldn't find anywere with a menu never mind one translated into English, and there are about five other Westeners in the whole town so we couldn't ask for help and no-one speaks anything other than Mandarin. We went for broke and took the few words we know into an open sided restaurant and asked for a few dishes and pointed at various ingredients in a huge fridge, trying to avoid anything too rank. In the end it was AMAZING, we ended up with really spicy egg fried rice with veg and pork, a plate of other fried sausage type meat, some pickled veg and unlimited green tea.....altogether it was £3.40 for both of us, incredible.

After dinner we went back to the hostel and booked a driver to take us around the famous rice terraces the nex day for both sunrise at 5.30am and sunset at 7pm. We come back to the hostel for 5 hours in between each trip and the whole day costs just £10 per person. We've found a French girl to do it with which has brought the price down.

I was almost sick on my pillow when the sounded at 5am, not what I've become accustomed to over the last year! We were picked up by our non-english speaking guide and drove through the thick wet mist in the dark on a non-existant road to our sunrise destination. I'm glad it was dark when we set off so we couldn't catch a glimpse of the rice terraces before our time. As we got out of the minibus and saw them glittering in the moonlight we all stopped in our tracks and lost our breath for a few seconds.....undescribable! However I will try! We were the only ones at the terraces apart from a few keen photographers. There was a lot of mist being sucked into the valley and we were worried it'd cut off the sunrise, no chance. As it started to rise, the sky was illuminated in beautiful deep red and orange colours, the mist just added to the atmosphere. As the sun rose above the surrounding mountains it shone over the wet terraces and made some intense reflections. We took at least a hundred photos! We simply stood and stared for two hours until the sun had completely risen before we moved on to the next viewpoint. The next one was very dramatic as you could see how far into the valley the terraces go and we spotted people working on the terraces, the third stop we got to actually walk down amongst the terraces and get a better look which was fab. After five hours we headed back to the room for a nap. We were picked up again at 4pm and taken to a few more viewpoints, at the final one there was a small shed with a single Chinese lady sat at a table, she had a BBQ in the middle and was cooking crispy pieces of tofu dipped in chilli and salt, she gave these out free to the three of us. We stayed here for sunset which was brill but not a patch on sunrise. We left a little early and got back by 7.30pm.

We ate dinner at Lao Si Chuan, another local but this time with menu's yay! We had morning glory (Chinese veg in garlic and chilli), pork in hot sauce, twice fried pork, liver in ginger and spring onions, rice and local beer.....this was £6 and was absolutely incredible! We had another relatively early night as we were up at 7am for our bus to Kunming. Moving quickly!!!!!

Next chapter will hopefully be in a few days after we've done Kunming and arrived in Dali. Lots to do in Kunming so looking forward to it!

Love by the barrel as always

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