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Vietnam!
I arrived at the Chinese border town of Hekou this morning, via a particularly painful and bumpy sleeper bus . The Vietnamese town of Lao Cai is just a few hundred metres away, and aside from having to reveal my suspicious looking books (the Portrait of Dorian Grey and the Lonely Planet phrase book of Mandarin), the border crossing was easy. Unfortunatley I wasn't prepared for the 20 moped men that decsended on me once I passed through Vietnamese immigration. In my sleep deprived state it seemed like a great idea to change some of my Yuan for their Dong - d'oh.
Anyway, I'm now at Lao Cai waiting for my sleeper train to Hanoi. My last few days in China were pretty chilled out. Shanri-La/Zhongdian was a really nice little town, and felt distinctly different to the rest of China, due in main to the large Tibetan population. Unfortunately, just an hour or so after writing my previous blog, I cut my foot while wandering about the town. Although it's starting to heal up now, it pretty much scuppered my plans of serious walking around Shangri-La. I still got out and about a little, and took a few short excursions with a couple of girls from the hostel, including cycling a short distance to a Tibetan village, visiting a hot spring and taking a walk (and pony ride...) around some of the plains near the town.
After 4 nights in Shangri-La I took a sleeper bus back to the capital, Kunming, and had a relatively chilled out day and a half doing very little, until I caught my bus to Hekou, and the rest you know.
I switched to my other memory card, so there will be some photos going up shortly, hurrah!
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