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So im almost home. ive been in china for 15 days which i have spent in the Yunnan province in the south west. It is gorgeous here but unfortuntly it is raining loads!!! i didnt realise that the chinese summer is also rainy season.
my first stop in yunnan was to a city called guilin. I went to some wied tourist caves. they were beautiful but it was funny how they set them up. inside they had big flash lights ligting up different rocks and formations with a guide telling everyone in chinese how this rock looks like a bumper harvest of melons or my personal favorite a rock that is supposed to look like a centipead scared by its reflection in a mirror lol there was then this weird light show and bubble machine show in the cave. it was very funy especially as the chinese tourists were really into it lol.
i then met a group of teenage girls who spoke very little english. they wanted to show me the sights so i spent the aftrnoon with them speaking through my phrasebook lol.
After guilin i went to a small town called yongshou. It was a really nice old chinese style town with beautiful scenery. i went on a river cruise down river li which was lovely despite the rain. I also went on a bike ride through he countryside with some people i had met.
i spent about 4 days in yongshou before heading to lijiang. Lijiang is a similar town to yangshou except much nicer. the old part of town is great with combbled streets and old chinese buildings to wander around. the shops all sold the same things as yangshou but it was still cool and there were even more chinese tourists here than yangshou.
i spent my first day in lijiang trying to fix my camera which is broken. It cant be fixed so i now have a disposable camera lol. in Lijiang i visted blackdragon pool park and i had a failed attempt at visiting jade mountain. i got on a public bus to the mountain but then got chucked off in the middle of nowhere because i didnt have enough money on me to pay the extortionate entry fee that only a western tourist has to pay. i was left to walk back to lijiang which had been a 40 minute bus journey!!! luckily after walking for over an hour a chinese family pulled over to take pictures of the scenery, i was so grateful to them when they offererd me a lift back to lijiang. I thik that is the stupidist situation ive found myself in on my whole trip but it all worked out ok thankfully.
From lijiang i also hiked the famous tiger leaping gorge. It was stunning to see the gorge and the yangtzi river flowing powerfully through it. i hiked down in the rain with some chinese people where we climbed onto a rock in the middle of the river. it was quite dangerous as one slip in the rain would have left us in the river dead. it was very cool to be so close tho. we then hiked back up which was even more dangerous. as it ws raining we had to go back up another way up three sets of wooden makeshift ladders 60 rungs each. They wer evertical up the gorge face and very wet. that was scary as one slip and u would fall forever into the yangtz and i did it all in my converse which was a bit of an error.
im now in Dali anothe rtourist town of old buildings and a wall around the town. its raining here too and ive just heard that yanshou whee i was first is flooded to waist height.
i leave this side of the country tomorrow for ahnghai so hopefully the weather will be better on the east side.
xxxx
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