Aaahhh... this is never going to stop unless I break a leg or something and have to spend weeks in just one place. When I left off, I'd just completed the main bulk of my journey from Thailand to China. That was a car to Vientiene (Laos, 5 hours), bus to Luang Prabang (12 hours), bus to Luang Nam Tha (6-8 hours, can't remember now), bus to Mengla (China, 7-8 hrs), and now finally a sleeper bus to Kunming (12 hours).

I've just been reading Bill Bryson's 'Neither Here Nor There', about travelling through Europe. He describes taking a 30 hour bus so that he could see the Northern Lights, that the seat must have been designed by a dwarf who wanted revenge on normal sized humans. Little did he know, it probably came second hand from China. The idea of beds on a bus is quite clever, they're arranged 3 abreast and in 2 tiers so the space is used well, and if you're around 5 feet tall you can lay down. Sort of, the angles are done like a fan of playing cards so that your feet effectively go under the head of the person in front. I still had some sleeping pills, so the journey wasn't too bad. After 2 consecutive nights on buses I arrived in Kunming and went to a youth hostel. Part of me thought of luxury to compensate for the travel, but the journeys had been expensive. My budget was about £20 per day, and there were some big expenses such as the visa and cross-border bus. I also figured that I was so exhausted that it didn't matter where I slept. I can't remember which one I stayed at, but it was fairly near the lake and is the one in all the guidebooks. It was fairly friendly and had a fair few northern Europeans. Unfortunately I had a snorer in the dorm - these people should not be allowed in hostels. We'd stayed in youth hostels in France and found the same thing - everyone who stays in them is untidy, smelly, and loud. Just like the French hotels. The only way I'd stay in France again would be camping, that's brilliant for some reason.

After a night there I moved to a nice hotel for the night, which had the advantage of being near the zoo. I was seeing Claire tomorrow so I wanted a nice easy day, and had about 3 weeks of beard to get rid of. Thailand presumably doesn't have thick hair issues (though I've seen some legs that would give Lou Neate a run for her money), so you can't get anything more advanced than a mach 2. China, however, is at the cutting edge of razors (hehe). I'd also split my trousers during an inexpert massage, so I had to go shopping. I really hate shopping in China, the assistants won't let you try anything unless they approve of it. This means they have to have a 40 inch waist pair of trousers in stock if you want to buy a 36 (yes, I know... fat. But I had 6 months of eating either chilli laxatives or fried chicken). They will give you the 40, and then you have to show them that they are clearly too big and haggle your way down to the correct size. Then they give you a look like a girl who is buying children's shoes to save money. It's all ridiculously formal too, like a public school kid going to visit a yacht yard. At least I was looking dapper.

Kunming is actually a really nice city, probably my favourite in China. It's friendly, green, has wonderfully open spaces (comparatively) and little pollution. The big city stuff is all there, and the buses are so complicated as to be useless, but I had some great chats with folk around the university campus - itself very interesting not only for the open spaces and botanical attractions, but because even though it was built in the 60s it looks exactly like an 18th century British country mansion. And not in the China way that you get used to (like their Rover cars - spelt Luowa, so pronounced Rover. I kid you not). It was actually made by Brits. Or at least supervised, we probably didn't get our hands dirty. I met a few nice students and a photographer from (Germany?) called Lars.

I didn't plan on being in Kunming so long, I was going to look at the rice terraces in the south but couldn't get there without coming to Kunming first, and after the journey I'd had I couldn't bare to backtrack. However, I was glad I had the extra time. On my last day I went to the zoo, which Lonely Planet describes as one of the best and most humane in China. That might still be true, but it's soul destroying. In England we don't let people have dogs if they live in flats. In China, you could fit 2 giraffes and a zebra on your balcony. All was concrete, and the space was astonishing. Not that the zoo is short of space, there is a huge botanical garden and a defunct fighter jet just sitting there. It was less a zoo than an animal prison. Only the elephants had anywhere near enough space - I saw a lion who could barely turn around.

Keen to leave and show my disapproval, I was distracted by a crowd which had formed. Wondering what amazing animal specimen this was, I moved closer. It was homo erectus negro - a black girl, about 20 years old. Thankfully she took the attention with a smile as people clicked away (you get used to this, I'd had my photo taken a few times already in the zoo too). It got a little awkward when a parent tried to push her child into the shot and the kid just looked terrified and cried until he could move away from this bizarre creature.

The pandas, naturally my reason for visiting and something I saw advertised everywhere, escaped me. I looked all around and asked a few people, but no joy. It's probably for the best that I didn't see them as they could have just been chained to a bike rack outside one of the other enclosures.