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Nice to see you, to see you nice(Brucey). Starting to get real hot as I head further east(actually just after I left Yunnan). My last few days in Kunming were good. Went to a nice spa resort in the forest, watched the All Blacks train with England, went to a party and a Chinese club - they had singers who would stand up randomly around the club and sing their song. It was pretty cool(English songs). Then moved off to Tiger Leaping gorge. Got the night bus and stopped over in Lijiang for the morning. Got in 2 hours early - 4.30am - but nobody got off the bus so slept until 7. Went to look around Lijiang. It has a nice old town area with canals and old buildings. That afternoon caught another bus to Qiaotao and prep'd for the gorge. Stayed in a cool hostel that had the best yak sandwiches. Helped the girls working there try to learn how to ride a bike (which assured bigger sandwiches :) Tiger Leaping gorge is the deepest gorge in the world - from the peak of a huge mountain it drops 3800mtrs down to the Yangze river. The hike is an easy 2 days(though with some pretty tough sections) or a hard day. I did the 2 dayer stopping off at the half-way house for the night. The path follows the river about 1000mtrs up on the other side of the mountain(named Sleeping Snow Jade Tiger or something). Met a few dudes and got on the beers; went to the dunny in what Micheal Palin described as the best view from a toilet in the world, and tryed to dry my sweaty clothes but it rained. Finished off the hike with a steep walk/climb down to the river. Real cool(I'll show you when I post photos), then made it back to town in time to catch a bus to ShangRi La - a town at about 2800mtrs on the south east edge of Tibet. Nice and cool. One of the guys from the gorge, 2 Asian Americans and 2 Israeli brothers and I went for a Yak hot pot. Good stuff. We(minus the Israelis) went off to the buddhist temple the next day - overrated - and then got a guy to drive us around the country side. Went to a horse riding place and, after trying to charge ridiculous prices for riding, they tryed to charge us for walking on the farm. We left, went down the road a little, got out and went for a walk. Got the sleeper bus back to Kunming that night and a sleeper train to Anshun the next night. Anshun has the biggest waterfalls in Asia. Had to do a tour off several places to see the falls. Mighty expensive - 368yuan - but it was a pretty good tour. The falls were cool and flowing fast. A path leads right around them going behind the waterfall. Moved on to a cool cave which you travel through on a boat, saw a wicked whirlpool where the water is drained from a lake to the other side of the mountain, and another where the river flows to one side of a ridge, whirlpools under and breaks off into 2 different rivers when it pushes up on the other side, each flowing in opposite directions - cool. Obviously mixed in were the stop-offs to see factories and buy stuff - got a free knife at one. A girl on the tour could speak English and tagged on to me to try and help with translations. I wasn't really interested but credit to her for trying to help. Got a bit too Chinesey for me when she said she expects me to like China and tryed to tell me that eating ants will make you strong. She knows this because her grandmother uses Chinese medicines. That night got another night train to Chongqing, sorted my float down the Yangze for the next day then caught a bus to Leshan to see the world's biggest Buddha. Carved into the side of a cliff, it is truely big. 71mtrs high; his big toe is bigger than me. Had some beers with a guy that helped me find the Buddha and his friends - English studying students - and watched Chinese gamble. Next day saw 6hrs back to Chongqing and a bus to Wushan to catch the ferry down stream. It was a nice couple of days on the Yangze. Not much going. Hazey air and average scenery was the go. Played a few games of chess against a math wiz wanna be professor from the states. Killed me every time. Saw the dam. A whole lot of water in there. Longer than Lake Superior. 39cubic kilometers of water. A 2309 meter long wall of concrete. Massive. Moved on to Yichang for the last evening and killed a night there before heading north on a day train to Luoyang. Sitting in the hard seats with all the regular Chinese was cool(hot, and sweaty) except for the spitting and smoking and throwing trash out the window - all of which I took part - when in Rome... Next day went to see the Longman caves. Old carvings of Buddhas into the side of cliffs. They were impressive but it was so hot that I didn't really appreciate the effort. Day after hooked up a live stream for the AB's SAF game. Nice one fellas. Can't say so about the feed. Kept rebuffering and pausing and totally missed Kaino's try and the conversion. Got the soft sleeper night train that night (cause there were no hard sleeper beds) to Nanjing and checked out the museum for the invasion of the Japanese and the massacre that occured. Pretty hard core. Had some awesome(as in emotional) photos. One of a peasant farmer walking along a path looking behind him at a Japanese soldier and the next of him shot and on the ground. One of a Chinese man's head places on a road barrier with a cigarette put in his mouth. Loads of dead bodies piled up next to the river and many more. 340000 people killed in 6weeks. Really well set out museum. A must see if in the area. Got that afternoon's train down to Suzhou and that's where I am now. Went to The(and I mean "The" because it's the only one) Chinese Sex Museum in Tongli. Bit of a laugh. Seems the Chinese were as promiscuous as the rest of us in the past. Had some crack up statues and pictures. The emphasis was on how sex has developed through the evolution of humanity, so it was a museum, mum. Off to Shanghai tomorrow. Been there a couple of times before so not looking forward to much. I'll go see the museum there because I hear it's really good then wait around for Sat's AB's match and head of towards Macau on Sun. CU.
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