Well, we arrived in China, but i'm still not entirely sure that this is a good thing!! We walked across the boarder from Vietnam, had our passports examined for about half an hour by Chinese officials, then walked the short distance to the bus station to catch our overnight bus to Kunming. At the bus station we were approached by a man who told us that we needed to pay him money since we intended to take our bags on the bus. We were skeptical since none of the other passengers seemed to be being charged and he didn't have a badge or uniform to prove his status. We'd never heard of this fee before and told him we would wait to discuss it with our driver when the bus turned up. The man then started yelling at us saying we were impolite and that he had friends in the police who would arrest us!! Nobody around us spoke any English and we were unsure how many 'friends' the guy had, so we paid up (about 1 pound) even though i'm sure it was a scam. What a welcome to China! I felt very disillusioned after that. We then boarded are bus, which was a sleeper bus with rows of beds down each aisle. Unfortunately, Dean and I ended up on the back 'row', which was the equivilent of a king sized bed which we shared with three Chinese men. Oh the fun! On the journey we stopped at some kind of official point, where a policeman took our passports away to his little office (For reasons unbeknown to us since nobody spoke any English) We followed the man to his office and our bus almost left without us!!! Dean got off to use the toilet at one of the service stations and found a row of holes with men sqatting over them doing their business...I didn't even dare go to the ladies! We finally arrived at our destination; we're staying at a nice little guesthouse with free pool, table tennis, table football, movies and alcohol (I think i'll just hide in here!) The only downside is that we have now downgraded to a dorm room with bunk beds (no more satellite tv and free toothbrushes; this is hardcore travel...take me back to Vietnam!) Kunming is a very nice and modern city, with plenty of shopping opportunities to be had...if I can learn to communicate my dress size! Very few people speak any English so Dean and I are desperately trying to pick up some Chinese. So far we have learned to count to five and to say hello and thankyou...though I have a feeling this won't get us very far! Today we ventured into the markets and found the cheapest DVD's and PS2 games I have ever seen in my life! DVDs were 33p each and I bought every episode of Friends for a total of 4 pounds. PS2 games were 25p each and it's fair to say we went a little crazy (We have bought 3 new cd wallets between us, put it that way!) Well, i'm sure i'll have some nicer tales of China soon, Claire x