China

From Kunming I got another overnoight train to Guilin in the South of China. In Chinese terms its a relativly small city so I only spent a couple of nights there. From there I did a day trip to a small village called Longshen and up into the hills to see an area where the hills are coverered in terraced rice fields. It does look very impressive from the postcards I've seen but unfortunatly the day I went the hills were mostly in the cloud so souldn't actually see much at all. It was still interesting to visit the village though, in this area the women are seen as more important and dominant over men. We saw a performance of traditional dancing and singing and heard a bit about the culture of the area. They believe that hair is a symbol of life so only get it cut once, when they are 18. So there hair is about 2m long and the style that they wear it in indicates if they are married or have children.

From Guilin I got a boat down the river to Yangshou. the weather still wasn't great but the scenery from the boat was quite spectacular and the mist around the mountains just added to it. Yangshou is quite a touristy town with most places being either guest houses or restraunts and bars and it is a very popular place with Western tourists, don't think I've seen so many since I left home. It has been a nice and relaxing place to stay for a few days. Spent a day just exploring the town and then went to a cooking class that was very good fun. Learnt to cook a few Chinese dishes including the local speciality of beer fish and my attempts actually tasted quite good. Spent an interesting evening going watching cormorant fishing, the traditional way of catching fish here, that is still used a bit. They tie string round a cormorants neck then take them out on the river. The comorants catch fish butthey cant swallow them properly so the fisherman then catches the comorants and makes it regurgitate them and the fish are still alive. Was interesting to see but I didn't want fish for dinner after seeing that.

Have spent the last couple of days just cycling around the local area on tracks by the river around loads of little villages and through the rice fields and farms. This area is a lot like the typical image or rural China and quite different to anywhere else I've been. Its also the main area for climbing in China, although there still doen't seem to be that much of it around and i think its all bolted routes. i haven't actually tried any of it though as having seen the Chinese idea of safety standards in general, I decided against hiring some gear.

Off to Hong Kong tonight so I'm looking forward to seeing how different it is from the rest of China, not really sure what to expect.

From Lijang I got another bus to a small village called Qiatou, at one end of tiger leaping gorge. The goge is in the south west of China, not far from the border of Burma and Tibet and is apparently one of the longest and narrowest gorges in the world. It get its name from some legend about a tiger that jumped across at the narrowest part. It is one of the few places in China where there seems to be a recognised hiking trail, so I decided to spend a couple of days walking it. The first days walking was quite difficult as the path climbed quite steeply to around 3000m, and it was very hot. But it was worth the effort as the scenery was spectacular and it was great to be out in a more remote part of the country, away from all the smog of the cities. Walked to a small village about half way along the gorge where I decided to spend the night at a guest house. turned out to be one of the nicest places I have stayed in China, with very nice rooms, food and great views over the gorge. On the wall of the balcony there was a copy of a few pages from Michael Palins book about hte himalyas. turns out he had done the trek and stayed in the same guest house, which got mentioned as he thought it had the most scenic toilet in the world. So i went to investigate and I have to agree with him on this. The toilet faced the gorge and only had a waist high wall so you could look out over the gorge at the mountains on th otherside. You'll be pleased to hear I decided against taking a photo from here as with a lot of toilets in China, it was an open commulnal kind of thing, so I didn't think other people would appreciate it. But the room from my bedroom window was very similar, so I'll try and add in some photos soon.

On the second day i decided no spend an extra night at the halfway house and hired a guide to go up the mountains behind the guest house. This was another great days walking. Although we were in the cloud for some of the time, when it did briefly cleat the views were amazing. the only problem with the walk was that some of it was through quite dense forest and regular breaks were needed to pick off leaches, which wasn't very nice but I don't think they do a lot of harm.

The next day i walked the 2nd half of the gorge. It was an easier days walking as it was mostly downhill to the river, but was still very nice. Found another very nice place to stay in the village of Daju at the end of the gorge. Somehow breakfast, lunch and dinner with beer and a nights accomodation only cost about 4 pounds. So was a nice end to a good trip.

While sitting eating hotpot, a local speciality in Chengdu, I started to think that it probably wasn't the best idea. Basically you have a pot of boiling spicy stuff on your table and they bring you raw meat and vegetable that you cook in it. Half way through the meal I thought that putting the raw meat into the hotpot with the same chopsticks that I was eating with probably wasn't the safest way of eating, but it was too late by then. The next morning I found that I had been right and it seemed to have been a very effective way of getting food poisoning. Although I wasn't feeling great, it wasn't too bad so just carried on with everything I had planned for the next few days. But after a couple of days walking in Emei Shan I still wasn't getting any better, so came down fom the hill a day earlier than I had planned and spent a couple of days in the village trying to recover before moving on. After a trip to the hot springs with a lot of time sat around in saunas and spas I was feeling Ok so decided to get the overnight train to Kunming. Alll I can say about that is that i found the compact design of the train bathrooms very useful as it meant that you could both go to the toilet and be sick in the basin at the same time (sorry about the detail there). So when I arrived in Kunming decided that a week of this was long enough and I needed to see a doctor. Following the advice from the hostal I went to the local hospital and the best I can say about the experiance is that it made me realise how could the health service at home really is. Outside the hospital you had to get various forms and stuff, and then eventually got directed in to the ward where I was suppossed to be. But there was no sign of any Drs or nurses, just a lot of patients and a cleaner. Sat around for a couple of hours waiting to find out what was going on, but more and more patients just kept turning up, so I was wondering how everything would be organised when the drs did arrive as there seemed to be no order or appointments. eventually a few Drs and nurses arrived and my question was answered, there basically was no system of organisation. It was just chaos as everyone was trying to push there way in to the consultation rooms to be seen. The idea of queueing for anything just doesn't exist in China. One of the nurses told me which dr I should try and see, so I joined the chaos. People were just pushing and fighting to get in the room, so that while one person was being seen there would be about 20 other people in the room trying to push there way to the drs desk so they would be seen next. eventualy the nurse stepped in and did try to organise some kind of queue and make people wiat outside but a lot of peole were still ignoring this. eventually i did get seen and although the dr could obviously speak some english she refused to try and said she would only listen if I spoke Chinese. So with the help of the phrase book I managed to explain what was wrong and thought we were getting somewhere then she just got up and walked out. A while later she came back with a nurse and I wa sent off with her. Followed her round the hospital for a bit, ended up in accident and emergency but when she went into the resuss room I refused to follow her any further. Eventually she came back and i tried to find out what was going on without much success. But 2 chinese hirls in the waiting room came and helped us translate a few things and then we all went back upstairs to the dr, who had obviously hoped she had got rid of me. The 2 random girls from the waiting room explained that the Dr wanted me to have some tests, so she sent me off again with the 2 girls. I think the dr was just trying to do anything to get rid of me, so by that point I had had enough and just walked out. I had some antibiotics from home that I had been taking so decided just to carry on treating myself.

Spent a couple of days in Kunming and was feeling a bit better so decided to move on to Lijang. Unfortunatly this meant a long bus journey of at least 8 hours, and after my last experiances on the train I wasn't looking forward to it. But actually it turned out to be a very nice journey. The bus was actually a luxury coach with aeroplane style seats and a hostess who brought round drinks etc. Apparently the bus journey was also very scenic but before getting on i took a combination of antibiotics, painkillers and travel sickness tablets that sent me to sleep for almost the entire journey. At one point there was apparently even a fight on the bus which lead to a lot of screaming and shouting of the people involved and the baby sat right behind me. The first i knew of it wa when the bus stopped and one of the womedn involved was taken away by the police.

Anyway I arrived in Lijang and since then I have been feeling fine.

Lijang turned out to be a really nice place, definitely worth the travelling to get there. It has both old town and new town areas, I was staying in the old town. In a way it is kind of like a chinese version of Venice, with narrow streets and a lot of rivers flowing through the town, and no cars. Was a nice place just to spend the day wandering around. so enjoyed a day there and evrything was going well again.

Spent the last few days at Emei Shan, a mountainous area with a lot of Buddhist temples. There is one main group of mountains that go up to about 3000m with a lot of walking routes to the top. A lot of the monastries on the way provide basic accommodation so most people spend a few days up there. There are also ways to get to the top using buses and cablecars so its a bit of a major tourist site for the Chinese and a lot busier than any of the hills in Scotland. But I've had a good couple of days walking and it was only really busy at the top and bottom as most Chinese people don't seem to be very interested in walking. There were a few being carried up though. Basically people were lying in a kind of deckchair thing that was carried on the shoulders of 2 men. Although most of the time I was on the hill it was in the clouds so couldn't actually see much of a view, the walk up through the forrest was still very nice and staying in a monestry was good. There were loads of different species of butterflys, some as big as birds and on part of the hill there were some monkeys. Unfortunatly they encourage people to feed the monkeys and sell food to give them, so they have become very used to people. Now if you don't have food they actually attack you so you have to carry a big stick to fight them off. Twice I actually had them grabbing onto my legs as I was trying to walk past. Glad I had the rabies injections now.

Spent the last day in the village at the bottom of the mountain, going to a hot spring later today and then getting an overnight train to Kunming, in the South West

Got another overnight train from Xian to Chengdu. Although I have been warned that they are uncomfortable and overcrowded, I've actually found them to be very good. Theres not really much to do in Chengdu, a few nice parks and a big statue of Chairman Mao is about it, but I just went there for a night so I could get a bus to Wolong. One interesting thing that I did find was a Carrefour supermarket, it basically had all the things you would expect from a Western supermarket and alot of other things as well. Fish in tanks, so you could just choose the one you wanted, live turtles and the meat counter seemed to have any part of any animal you could imagine. Somehow managed to win some cream to make your skin turn whiter. Even after nearly 2 months in the sun with the temperature over 30, I may be slightly more tanned than when I left, but don't think this is something I'll ever have any use for.

The bus to Wolong was another transport adventure, as yet again it turned out that for about the last 50km they hadn't actually built the road yet. The bus had to stop for about 3 hours as the track isn't actually open during the day because they are still building it. But it was a nice journey beside a river through the mountains. It's another place where very few Western people go, so no one spoke any English. But found a nice hotel to stay in and had a nice meal by just going into the kitchen pointing at a few vegetables and they made it into something very good.

The next day I went to a panda research base/breeding centre, which was very good. Chance to see a lot of pandas in almost native conditions. They have a few baby pandas there at the moment, the youngest was 10 days old, it had to be kept in an incubator and didn't really look anything like a panda as it had no fur yet. A slightly older one that was nearly a month old was very cute.

Had planned to carry on travelling further west towards Tibet, but as far as I could work out, the 'road' was even worse so it wasn't possible. Instead I returned to Chengdu and headed further south to Emei Shan.