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For the rest of Tuesday I took it easy. I went for a Muslim meal with Sam and Andy for tea which was very nice, especially the cheese!
Later we watched a film about Che Guavara then Steve and Kerri arrived. They are teachers on our programme but not in Hunan. We had a drink with them but everyone was tired and Sam/Andy were leaving the next morning so we didn't stay up too late.
On Wednesday I was still a little worse for wear so I skipped the Stone Forest again and had a long breakfast then walked around Kunming with Steve and Kerri. The weather was great and I spent extortionate amounts of money on a book then we had a curry for lunch!
We walked around the university then went to visit the temple and spoke to a guy teaching English in Beijing. Afterwards we went to meet a friend of a friend of Kerri and Steve's and went to visit some pagodas. As we headed back to town it was getting late so I walked back to the hostel and everyone else went for some food.
I grabbed my stuff from the hostel, got into a taxi and made it to the bus station, that was the easy part... I had problems finding the bus which was hiding miles behind everything else, then some guy who said he was a manager and I would need to pay 10RMB per kilogram and I had a 5kg bag (it was much more than that). He tried to show me on the back of the ticket but I knew enough Chinese to know that's not what it said. I called the hostel but they were no help. In the end I got him down to 25RMB nd decided to pay to make sure he didn't just ditch my bag. Some other westerners came to talk to me because he was trying the same thing on them but they just refused to pay and got off the bus. I was on edge after that and I didn't get much sleep on my little cramped bed.
When we arrived in Lijiang it was 6am, dark and I was lost.
I got a taxi to the outskirts of the old town (no cars were allowed in) but I wasn't sure where to go after that. I tried calling two hostels with no joy and walked around town in the dark for ages. Eventually I gave up on the directions I had and followed the signposts to the main square. I found a shop open and selling breakfast noodles so I stopped there until it was daylight (about 8am).
Once I could see where I was going I found the hostel pretty easily. I checked in then went straight to bed. It was so cold :( I slept until about 1pm then I had a wash in ice water and made myself as presentable as possible (not hot water until 6pm) then went for a walk around town.
It is very pretty although it's alllll shops and cafes, mmmm coffee :)
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