Gelin Pulante Hotel Chengdu

... a pit covered with a few planks. No running water. And no cubicles. Shoogly enough to make me nervous but not deep enough to hide the evidence of previous use. I will leave the rest to your imagination.

But to end the toilet tales on a positive note, contrast that with one in Lijiang. Another squat toilet but in an immaculately clean cubicle. At squatting height there is a small flat screen TV showing a dance ...

... wife in 2007.


Lara Peak (the snowy one in the middle) from up the Champing Valley

You can read more about this ascent in Alpinist:
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP19/n ewswire-qionglai-lara-shan-puryear
< br>More recently, in 2008, Chad and Dylan Johnson put up a harrowing first ascent on SiGuNiangShan, the prize peak in ...

... I think I came to dislike it a bit, through absolutely no fault of its own, just that it was muggy and I was distressed to find myself away from Xinjiang after I'd come to like the place so much. Plus I was pretty sick with the runs for a few days, which never makes one think particularly well of a place, unfair though this may be. This time, I am ambivalent, which is actually pretty ok considering how miserable I was to leave Songpan.

After a night of ...

... They were really fascinating to watch.

After the red pandas, we walked to another enclosure for pandas. Although it did not have any pandas, we saw that a father had just paid for his two daughters to have their picture taken with a panda. You can pay to have your picture taken or even hold the panda. But it is not cheap. These two girls basically got to put their hand on the back of the panda and I think it cost ...

... great discovery for me. I totally enjoyed and love Yunnan province. The people are very friendly, always willing and wanting to help and the countryside is amazing. I must say that Kunming is still my favorite city because of the amenities of a city as well as great countryside just a breath away.

During my entire visit in China I would always be so suprised at the end of each day to have accomplished/visited everything I had set out to do /visit in the morning ...

... packing a bag of just clothes, glasses, guide book, money, passport photocopies and a bottle of water, we headed out to the bus station at 7pm in the evening. I do love the feeling I get when I set out on an 'adventure' not knowing whats about to happen. I love it even more when it's in a country where I don't even speak the language..." This could get interesting", I thought. The first bus came, the number 7, and we hopped on to the other end of town ...

... the earthquake (we were told). When we arrived, we were the first people there, so we ran to the cub enclosure just in time for their feeding. It was brilliant to see 3 pandas in frnt of you, munching away on the bamboo. We went to another enclosure with older pandas in, but there were more people there so we decidedto find the nursery. When we got to the nursery, there were 2 workers behind a huge glass screen, and 6 tiny little babies of varying ages between 1 ...

... met up with the witch doctor and some other people in a tiny van that had a lot of fireworks in it. We got a quick breakfast, which back home would usually be an egg sandwich or something, but here in China a quick breakfast is noodles and meat. It was actually a great meal, as most every meal is here. We got back out to his parents path around 11 and I was handed two huge wheels of firecrackers to carry back to the house. You ...

... au quel cas nous perdons notre billet d'avion, ou prendre l'avion quand même, avec une copie certifiée du passeport, et tenter de téléphoner à l'hotel, sachant que nous n'en connaissons ni l'adresse ni le nom. Nous choisissons la deuxième solution. Pendant ce temps, j'ai demandé à Qing Er, ma copine de Shenzhen, de retrouver l'hotel (sachant qu'il est près de la gare, près du ...

... worth the visit. We had now given up on our plans to go to Tibet, as it was expensive, train tickets were difficult to come by and everyone we spoke to had a different story about travel permits etc. While in Peoples Park at a tea garden a local came over and opened with the line "I am not a dangerous man". He didn't look dangerous, and I have seen enough Jet Lee movies now to be a Kung Fu expert, so we invited him to have some tea ...