Qian-Scenery Hotel 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.

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.
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.
We found this internet cafe ...

... afternoon or night time!
I don't know how people on tour do it because it's really tiring, last night people were trying to get us to come out and get food with them after the gig (this one guy was from HK, but had spent some time in Ireland so had the coolest Irish accent ever!) but we were all too exhausted and maybe a little burnt out (speaking for myself) so we just came back to the hotel...and went to sleep...we haven't been to bed before 1 ...

... 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.

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 ...

... on the scenic and cultural attractions of Xijiang, instead of just a beautiful face. A Xiang-yi sees it differently. "Every villager is an ambassador of Xijiang," she said. "Besides, you can find girls much more beautiful than I everywhere in the village." A Xiang-yi said she has more important tasks to concentrate on for now - with the May Day holiday approaching, she has to get ready and train dozens of staff members for a tea-tasting fair. "It will be three hectic days," she said.

... to see there, a waste of time. Buy some fruit and sweets for supper in the train, and we are left at Guiyang train station, among milions of chinese people. The train has no closed cabins, and we must sleep in the beds in the middle of the corridor, more than 80 persons per wagon. This will really be an experience. Tomorrow we arrive in Guilin, after more than 17 hours in the train. I wonder if it is worth saving the hotel to suffer all this.

... capital of the province. Check in, a short walk, and buy something for supper in a supermarket: some dehidrated noodles, to which you only have to add some boiling water to cook them. Very cheap and tasty! It's been almost 1 week since we saw last non chinese person! Incredible, we thought we would find thousands of tourists everywhere, visiting China during Olympics, but we were wrong.

... Some people walked 3-4 hours in order to receive the donation. กก zzm409 Mrs. Ma and the volunteers arranged the clothing into piles; villagers picked ...

... they string them together with your Chinese zodiac sign and a little message on a final piece. Yoong chose a fish for the end of her chain. She also got them for the two boys, but of course there was no piece for their non-Chinese surname. She tried to get an extra piece each with their first name as compensation but the salesgirl would only do this if she could attach it to the rest of the chain. We couldn't see the logic of this, but compromised by taking only one ...

... in the city; the governor of the city and several other dignitaries were there, and we met some interesting teachers from the Philipeans. The best part, though, was the macaroni and cheese. Yesterday, we spent the evening at another PCV's apartment, who teaches at a beautiful financial college on the outskirts of the city. Today, a colleague and I took a walk through the amusement park near where we live, and I took some ...