Guan Du Hotel Kunming

... if there is still enough light in the evenings to take nice pictures...<br>And otherwise: Looking forward to my little trip home in three weeks, can't wait to have some cheese, christmas-cookies and a heater. Cause even the city of eternal spring has cold nights in winter!<br>

... had a long corridor with two beds together on one side and a single bed on the other. I had specifically asked for two beds together at the hostel - but alas our beds were separate. We gestured to the driver who gave us two together. <br>We went to put our luggage in the bottom of the coach - which was almost overflowing with boxes. As soon as we had found a space the driver grabs our bags and throws them onto the floor. 'Errr... hello!!', He looks at me and ...

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... put them on when I go for a walk," he laughs. Passing the "shoe corridor", one can see a big working desk with painting tools and half-finished works. On the left is a small bedroom and on the right a bigger one to store his collections and finished paintings. There is an open kitchen at the end of the living room with a refrigerator always full of raw food. "An artist should first make his stomach full, and then he can focus on his creation," Naruo says with a ...

... in so I arrange to meet later and then set about trying to secure a travel permit and flight ticket to Tibet. Enquiring at the hostel and consulting the guidebook both lead to the same conclusion which is the only person in town who can secure the necessary travel arrangements for those travelling alone into Tibet is Mr Chen based at the Cameilia hotel (a once legendary hotel everybody keeps saying - not sure exactly why but it is a bit past it's hey day now ...

... carrefour, when we finished shopping and returned to our bikes I found my key wouldn't fit in the lock, someone had tampered with it. We found a locksmith and he told us there was half of a broken key deep in the lock, basically someone tried to rob it. I couldn't believe it, within an hour of buying my bike someone tried to steal it. I bought TWO locks for it after that. We'll see how long that lasts.

... home does make me feel slightly smug. On weekdays I eat in the school - Yunnan style food cooked by a woman with the shrillest, most unintelligible Chinese accent I have yet come across. She is very chatty, but unfortunately her accent, and the fact that she uses lots of words from the specific Kunming dialect makes her virtually unintelligible - still she seems to enjoy laughing manically with us though, so I take it ...

... is second in their culture) for a tissue, which he did not understand, and that set off a little tutorial session where we got to "Head and shoulders, knees and toes". He eagerly wrote down the spelling and pronunciation of everything I taught him and never needed anything repeated more than twice. I met up again with Dan and Conor, who were taking off for Laos later that day, for some first class 5RMB dumplings for lunch. I spent the early part of the afternoon ...

... of China, down near the border with Vietnam and Laos, the city is nearly 1900m above sea level and so the weather does not have the same clammy, humid and almost unbearable feel of much of China. To many of us, the thought of Eternal Spring (April showers, anyone?) is not particularly appealing, but here we are talking Spring in contrast to the searing summers that most inland Chinese cities get, and as a result it seems to be a very pleasant 25 degrees or so ...