"You're gonna die now John!"

-- Commando

Kunming.... A city of four million people close to the southern border of China, that serves no real purpose other than to allow Tibet-Weary travellers to gorge on Big Macs before continuing south to Laos.

We have arrived in Kunming from a quick two night stop in Dali - another 'new old' town that seems to exist only for somewhere for stoner backpackers to congregate and talk about how great being a stoner is. Old ladies whisper "Ganja, Hashish" in your ear as you walk past, and bars run by English blokes with long hair are full to bursting point with an International Crowd that have two things in common: They tend to have long hair, and they tend to be completely mashed.

Anyway, Kunming. There's not much to do here apart from eat Big Macs. There's a Stone Forest (whatever that is) that costs a tenner to go and see and is apparantly rubbish. And also there's a Surfing Buddha, which apparantly you can't see because they've built a wall in front of it.

This is no great problem for us. Firstly, after six weeks in China we're pretty much touristed-out, and secondly, we need to spend some quality time on T'Internet trying to plot our course to Australia by sea... which is proving rather tricky.

In Dali we met up with Dave the Australian, whom we'd met in the Halfway House during the Tiger Leaping Gorge. He had continued to be sterling company so we became a group of four as we headed to Kunming. After a couple of cracking nights out he flew off to Shanghai, but then he's off back to Australia so the good times will no doubt start again.

Vinny has finally let the Obi-Wan Kenobi remarks get to him, and has shaved off his beard. Well, I say he's shaved it off. He is now the proud owner of the finest Handlebar Moustache the world has ever seen. It's quite a scary thing, as the pictures will no doubt show... we think it may be possessed.

This has led to us dropping the Obi-Wan Kenobi line of banter, and starting a new one about Bennett, the villain from Commando who had a Handlebar moustache and a chainmail vest.

The days can be long here in China...