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After another appalling night's sleep on a sleeper train we arrived in Kaili where we left our big rucksacks and headed out to a Minority village for two nights. The first village was clearly geared up for the tourist industry with lots of shops and stalls and lots of new building work going on. It is fascinating to see the wooden houses being made and the intricate patterns of the window frames and doors. We stayed in a simple guesthouse with seriously hard beds, basically wooden slats with straw and then a sheet on top, not a good recipe for a great night's sleep. The meal we had in the evening was simple, but nice, it was rather ruined by the locals trying to force rice wine down everyone's necks, something I did not participate in, which I was rather glad when we tried the same with them and they basically spat it out.
I was even more glad the next morning when we set off on our trek to the next village, as one of the guys in our group had clearly had too much and took a bus to the next village. Instead we experienced some amazing views and met a group of children heading to the next village by themselves, they were aged between 3 and 9. Most of the walk was easy going, but a few parts were rather steep and really tested the old calf muscles, again the group was split in two with Pete and I in the front pack, leaving the dawdlers and the unfit behind.
We arrived in our next village Ma Lao, meaning silversmith village, to a group of men standing over something in the middle of the path, we realised it was a dead pig which they were clearly preparing to cook, the head had been removed and there was blood all over the pathway, it was a walk quickly and try not to look moment. The weather had not been great on the walk slightly cold and drizzling so we arrived at our homestay damp and hungry, obviously being a simple home there was no heating, so we huddled round a tiny fire attempting to warm up. It was explained that the people of the village were not happy for males and females to share rooms, so Pete and I had to separate. We had a lovely meal cooked by the women whose home we were staying in and were invited to join the celebrations as they were building a new house. We went along and found a large number of the village hanging around the frame of the new house, clearly a tradition or perhaps just fun, but a large number of sweets were dropped from the rafters for the kids, although the adults of the village joined in and so did we, but the ones we caught we did give to the smaller children.
We were invited to join the banquet which turned out to be the meat from the pig we had seen earlier. The meat was delicious, but unfortunately it was served with all the fat, we left before the rice wine drinking began and went back to the homestay and even harder beds than the night before. We had a nice breakfast of boiled eggs and rice porridge, which with a lot of sugar tastes quite nice.
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