Nanmen Acient City Hotel Lijiang

... 3pm and stopped at Sean's Guesthouse where I met up with Chris who had taken a minibus directly to Sean's.<br>http://www.tigerleapinggorge .com/<br>I didn't like Tina's, as it is a huge modern building directly on the street. There was nothing local or romantic about this guesthouse. Sean's is a comfy place, each dorm bed has a teddy bear on its pillows. And, you cant' beat 20RMB and a happy hour from 4-8pm. ;-)<br><br>I left the next day ...

Got a ride to Li Jiang with some cool young chinese backpackers who were travelling up to Lhasa Tibet via a beast of a land rover which I named Rhino for them because well every car needs a name! So hoped in for the 3 hour ride to Li Jiang with Ben, Fiona and John we stopped a few times and Ben pointed out a few villages on the way saying 'this is real china', which to be honest I have to agree Yunnan away from the tourist trap places has really stood ...

... comme ca y'a un prix **** you pour les touristes pis un prix double **** you pour moi avec mon air de frais-chier-Joe-connaissant. <br><br>Maudit.<br><br>Et le pire? Pour arriver a Chengdu je dois passer par Lijiang (La belle riviere) qui est en fait Dali, en dix fois plus grand. Je reste ici moins de 18 heures de toute facon, parce que j'ai VINGT-QUATRE HEURES D'AUTOBUS A FAIRE POUR ARRIVER A CHENGDU.<br><br>Phoque.<br><br>Pis ca ...

... us.<br><br>5.9 - Leaping Tiger gorge<br>we wet with mama's minibus to the Leaping Tiger gorge - 2.5 hours, then started climing. we were 6 Israelis. The way up to the first geusthouse (Naxi family), 7-8 km, was mostly a climb up.<br>Eyal wasn't feeling very well from the start, but he tought it will pass. Rivka took a mule after about 60 minutes of climbing, and a half hour later Eyal throu his guts out. It was than that he realized ...

... couple lived their with their daughter and granddaughter (likely son too, but he was probably working). The homes are like courtyards. Along the road there are some living quarters, the middle is open and there are living quarters at the back. This inner courtyard had a fig tree, a peach tree and a loquat tree. The couple gave us some peaches and loquats to eat and take with us. The fruit was very good! It was very kind and generous of them. They also ...

Travelled down from Shangri-la to Qiaotou by bus. Spent the night at Jane's Guest House before starting the two day trek the next day. The first days trek took us about 5 1/2 hours. Wasn't too difficult. 28 bends part was the only real tough part. The thin air and the beers the night before ...

... until it started to rain. not good. it POURED! like seriously.... we got caught and were soaking wet from head to toe. but that's a part of backpacking. after returning to the hostel, we spend the late afternoon with a couple from Israel playing cards and planning a joint trip to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. then, on our way out to dinner, we met a French Canadian couple we later joined us for the next couple of days.

... Shortcuts.document_url = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_tags = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet = { "lw_1209107859_0": { "text": "Lijiang", "extended": 0, "startchar": 475, "endchar": 481, "start": 475, "end": 481, "extendedFrom": "", "predictedCategory": "PLACE", "predictionProbability": "0.50046", "weight": 0.64132, "type": ["shortcuts:/us/instance/place/cn/town" ], "category": ["PLACE"], "context": "fortitude. The gorge is located about 100 miles north of ...

... the fact that Bertie and I ran most of it downhill whilst getting very funny looks from the locals. At the bottom learnt advanced Chinese landslide clearing techniques, and the reason why there are so many pot holes in the roads. Throw some explosives in amongst the rubble and hope you blow some off the road without destroying it.

... washed out or blocked by landslides - some seriously hairy moments were our overloaded tincan Suzuki got millimetres from plummeting the 2000 metres to the river below!! On our final day in Lijiang we hired bikes and headed off the local villages. Ben is actually a geographer but we still spend most of our time lost. This day was no exception and we ended up teaming with another random bunch of travellers to find our way. Had a great day in this old school ...