The central heating has been off for a couple of weeks now, so I think we can say spring is officially here. It strikes me as a bit of a misnomer to call the Chinese New Year festivities "Spring Festival" when there's still rather a lot of winter weather to come. Anyway, the heating is off now and we’re coping fine. I had been dreading it happening, a bit afraid that the apartment would be cold, it would be hard to get up in the mornings, etc., but it&...

There are lots of complaints about places being too "touristy". Touristy doesn't have to be tacky. I don’t mind touristy. We go as tourists after all! And use the tourist facilities and services!Lijiang, a UNESCO heritage listed ancient town certainly is touristy. It is also beautiful. It’s an absolute warren of tiny alleys paved with bumpy cobblestones, little streams, bridges, tiny shops and eateries, locals in traditional dress – and tour...

The Kunming-Chengdu leg of the train journey was the most amazing yet. It was a long trip with staggering scenery through garden plots and villages clinging to steep slopes and terraces as extensive and stunning as Yuanyang - though these were green and brown, not flooded with shimmering water. Some were no longer cultivated, some planted with pines, some abandoned.We travelled up into striking, steep mountains and through many tunnels. Some very long, sometimes ...

I'm back. Afraid the blog fell into a big hole for a while - call it writer's block. I've (finally) brought it up to date with our trip south - mainly to have a record for myself, but also to make the lines in the little map look neat :-)We were looking forward to travelling round Yunnan so were pleased to arrive in Kunming. Described as "Spring City" in the Lonely Planet, and after the cold spell further south, we lapped up the nice weather when we g...

The bus journey from Kunming went through interesting hilly countryside with many hairpin bends – we travelled along the small roads, not the expressway.We'd booked into a new hotel, part of the Fairyland chain, which we’d discovered on the web and had rave reviews. Took a bit of finding as the website didn’t give the Chinese name, so we couldn’t ask for directions. Having actually been dropped very close by the taxi, we did a large lo...