Saturday - sunny

The dumpling breakfast today was much better than our breakfast yesterday. After breaky we packed up checked out and waited for the bus in reception.

After a little confusion as to where the location of the bus stop was on the street, we hopped on and began another road trip. Hopefully we didn't keep the bus waiting too long.

It was a grueling 6-7hrs. It was only supposed to take 4 hrs, but the roads were so bad, they were doing roadworks for ever. We were stationary in one place for about half an hour. There was no traffic control, everyone was dodging each other, absolute mayhem. The roadworks just kept going, bump after bump, and we felt every bump. We couldn't stay still enough to sleep, or read it was that bouncy.

The trip eventually ended, well we think? No one could speak English so we didn't know if this was our stop. The driver had disappeared for us to ask. Kim asked someone, and they told her that this was our stop. I was still shaking when I hopped off.

We made our way out onto the street and tried to find an intersection, to find out where we were. Great no intersections the same as on our map. Not again! Well we walked past the bus station twice, the whole time trying to get a cab. On our third pass we got one! He wasn't using his meter so we had to negotiate a price. $2.

Silly me though, I gave the driver the wrong hotel. It was alright the right hotel was only just down the road.

A short walk to the hotel, and we checked in. It was a nice place, quite cozy. We were starving by this stage, so we went looking for a place to eat.

We stopped at a Restaurant close to the hotel. It was run by Miao people. it was a fun lunch, there were maybe 8 or so girl waitresses. They would all laugh and smile when they tried to speak English. Then big mumma came over and took over taking the orders.

The food was great. The meal was huge too big actually, it would of feed 4 people easily. We had a big bowl of fish soup (10 whole baby catfish), beef stir fry, tomato egg salad, shredded potato, and steamed veggies, a pot of tea and beers. All for $20 it took awhile to eat but we managed to eat most of the food that was put in front of us.

We badly needed to do some walking after that meal. So that's what we did for the next 7-8hrs.

This town reminded us of the Vietnam town of Hoi An. Very old buildings and bridges that have been restored. Stone pathways and roads, their lane ways were even more narrow than Hoi An's. It was set on the banks of a river too, except here the houses are built on stilts, on the river. Lots of little guest houses, pubs and restaurants line the river. The houses all light up and it looks like a different place than in the day.

It's very nice at night time, lots of people out and about. Bands playing in pubs and on the streets. People dancing, shops and restaurants making a killing. it was good walking around at night we walked both sides of the river one side has old gate towers and a city wall. There are stepping stones and wooden bridges to cross at certain places along the river. The wall was to separate the minority people from the Chinese.

We walked down so many lanes past people's houses, we could see right inside. No privacy at all, with all the zig zagging through doorways and roads we never managed to get lost, Howrah!

So many people today and tonight looked again shocked to see Kim and I, so many stares and photos being taken. The sneaky photos are classic especially when we catch them out. They point at as, we point back now. So strange.

We took a lane that went down behind our hotel and then another lane down to a riverside bar with a fella playing an acoustic guitar we had couple drinks and just people watched and looked at the lit up tower and houses on the other side of the river.

It was getting late so we went back to the hotel we got some soft serve on the main street. I had one more drink in the hotel bar. Then had a good shower before bed.