Treasure Harbour International Hotel Lijiang

... Tokyo price for his morning labor. My love of this rare delicacy was
requited when I took a bunch to a home-stay caf and had it steamed in
its own juices and barbequed with a separate order of garlic chips. Having an egg for breakfast must be
the most banal first meal of the day anywhere in the world, but this
reached new heights for me in Yunnan. There were freshly laid chicken
eggs for sure, but it was a peddler sitting ...

... for many years, the respected Chinese glaciologist Yao
Tandong recently warned that, given present trends, almost two-thirds
of the plateau’s glaciers could well disappear within the next 40
years. With the planet having just experienced the 10 hottest years on
record, the average annual melting rate of mountain glaciers seems to
have doubled after the turn of the millennium from the two decades
before.Moreover, temperatures on the Tibetan ...

... culture secretary, was marrying his Chinese partner
Lucia in a pre-revolutionary ceremony.
"We went back to what a wedding would have been like pre-1949 - that
involved us going through the streets with a sedan chair carried by my
family," Hunt says, recalling how he had to undergo a series of tests
before his family could carry away his bride ...

... br>We made good time on the first leg to the Naxi Family Guesthouse ( 1 1/2 hours) to have lunch. The views just kept getting better & better as we continued to get higher above the gorge below. At lunch I invited a girl sitting on her own to join us - she was Alison from Sydney & had been working for a year at the Australian Embassy in Beijing & was taking some holidays before going to India ...

... some small yellow flowers above that point. We started up the stairs and passed numerous people with rented winter coats that were 3/4 length and oxygen cans (40 yuan each). I was wearing pants, a long sleeve shirt, sweat shirt and rain coat. Bill was wearing sandals, shorts, long sleeve shirt and sweat shirt. Do you think we stuck out at all??!! Part way up to the top of the climb Bill decided to pick a snowball fight with a Chinese guy. I thought it ...

... never done this type of riding before I wasn't confident about staying on after yesterdays mishaps, but some good tips from Kim helped a lot and I managed to complete the ride unscathed. Then lunch before our longest ascent for the day, 9kms along a good sealed road with some spectacular valley views but it wasn't easy. The top of ...

... the extra weight. The problem is they are spread out unpredictably and you can find yourself without water and a ways to go to the next stop. About two hours into the hike we decided to break off the main path, always a good idea. The local on the horse warned and begged us not to. At the time it felt great to ditch him, but in retrospect we should have listened. The sign seemed to infer that the guest house was near and we needed to use ...

... later when light turned on in my head and I asked them all to give me their tickets. I raised my Sprite bottle in the air and told them to follow me to the entrance and handed the tickets to the gatekeeper. She stamped them all in and they all followed me into the park. The old Jedi mind trick is a beautiful thing. At the end of the day, we took a great picture where I borrowed the tour guide flag from a real tour guide. I gave them all the tips I could about Tiger ...

... point for Tiger Leaping Gorge. I think its one of the (if not the) deepest gorge in the world with the raging Yangtze running over 2000 metres below the path. We did a two day trek into the gorge with a random bunch of fun people. Wasn't too bad except the section called the 28 bends where you just go up and up and up! Spectacular views on the first day were followed by rain and mist on the second making an especially interesting journey back as much of the road had ...

Continued from ; An unlikely artist The mini bus north to Lijiang picks me up from outside the Marley bar. I oblige another 'Susan' waiting at the bus station the other end and walk to her guesthouse. And begin by washing the **** stains out of my strides. An old proverb springs to mind here which should be obvious but often gets forgotten ; man who drink beer before bus ride, arrive with damp trouser. Chinese buses stop for no one. I've even heard stories ...