Miracle Plaza Guiyang

... br>The best bit about yesterday has to be that Tom went out looking for dinner whilst i grabbed a shower, and when he came back, he had chips and sausage! We have eaten nothing but noodles and rice with spicy food stuffs for 10 days to finally have something mildly english, was amazing. Even if the chips were under-cooked, and the sausage over-cooked. Oh well.<br><br>We're off to Kunming today on a train, heading south to Laos.

... and a little old, a typical Chineese place. Nobody speaks English and all the signs are in Chineese(which is their second language, after the Miao language), anyway: we manage.<br>Today at 9 Billy came and took us to thr CITS office, gave us good information. We go at 12:30 to a Miao village, Xijiang, where we'll spend the night. Tomorrow we'll return' pick the luggage and continue to the south.<br>We found this internet cafe ...

... thinking of home and the games going on a lot of time on saturday! <br><br>pps - anyone...? how are the snowdogs going?!?!? alright?? :) <br><br>ppps - Pat and Gus - Hope your 21st went really well...if you happen to read this!<br><br>Later....<br>we went out for lunch with CD, the maganger of the bar last night...this was cooll...there's lots and lots of little dishes filled with different vegetables spread over the table....you get a small, thin ...

... really are enjoying delicious food. For example, for lunch today, we shared three dishes with steamed rice. A whole river fish, chilli ginger beans and garlic water spinach with steamed rice and washed down with green tea.<br><br>When we arrived in this rather large town of Guiyang I wish we had the movie camera directed on us. Helen was unsure of the way to the hotel so we stopped at some lights and she grabbed a taxi for us to follow. The traffic parted amid a deluge ...

... think it was a marketing gimmick," she said. She added that she felt a little uneasy with the sudden change of role from a government official to a national celebrity. Tourism official becomes an attraction herself "What I really wish is for more people to come and know my village and its people." Professor Mao Shoulong at Renmin University of China said A Xiang-yi's sudden rise to stardom can be seen as an "unexpected opportunity". "Even deliberately crafting a celebrity ...

In our daily walk before breakfast, Monika joins a Taiqi group, and I play badminton for sme minutes with local people at the park. Then some poor breakfast, a quick shower and head for our first visit: Qingyan Old Town. A typical scenery of chinese ancient films, a grey wall sorrounding the town, small buldings with inner terraces, narrow stony streets...and the non-stopping rain. We must buy an umbrella and Michael also to continue the visit ...

We must check out at 8:00, because we need more than 3 hours to cover 145 km from Anshun to Zhijin, where te biggest karst cave in China is waiting for us. The roads are a torture, but we hope it will be worth all the suffering. We are visiting Daji cave, an enormous area under a mountain, with many huge "rooms", in which football grounds should fit widely. Lots of different karstic ...

... welfare. This was something Chinese Confucianism hadn't been able to accomplish in the previous 2000 years. However, today the name of Stone Gateway is again disappearing into this poorest Wumeng mountain area, no longer as known to the public as before. Stone Gateway had the earliest co-education and bilingual teaching system in contemporary China. The Stone Gateway school was equipped with all kinds of facilities, including dormitories, an ...

City life is nice, but the ugly white fluorescence, and seemingly omnipresent images of my office walls searing my retina were enough to prompt me to suggest that we should get away. It was the classic, Where? Anywhere... type conversation. Actually, fresh air and a bit of greenery were closest to my mind and the suggestion of a short flight to what I personally find to be the most beautiful province in China, Guizhou, was just the ticket. Sitting in a hotel in the ...

... we heard the music again, and as we rounded a bend we passed a procession of villagers in traditional clothing beating drums and playing an odd reed instrument called the lusheng. Passing around another bend we could see the village of Gaoyan perched high in the mountains. The houses are all over the place and look like toys stuck in the mud of the mountains. As we passed into the village we drank a bowl or rice wine as a welcome. We filed up to the largest building in town ...