Yuequan Yizhan Hotel Lijiang

... do in Lijiang is to rent a bike and explore the surrounding villages. I went through a lovely village near the reservoir and then visited Shuhe Old Town, a smaller version of Lijiang. Nestled at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, 6 km northwest of Lijiang Old Town, Shuhe was once a staging post at ancient Tea & Horse Road. With an altitude of 2440 meters above sea level, it is a tranquil town with a population of about 3000 people ...

... paying the entry fee at the main gate 1) if your getting there early before 8am or after 5pm your sweet theres no one there. 2) through the other few entries on the side a mini bus from Likenlong Supermarket should do it too if anyone tries to make you pay just ignore them. Well wish we could have avoided the fee but as we drove in and realised we had to pay it was to late and my fellow travellers were not as keen as me to forgo the fee but hey it ...

J'ai quitter prestamment cette ville vide de sens qu'etait Dali.<br><br>Pour bien vous expliquer cette ville, imaginez le vieu port de Montreal avec une superficie de la ville de Greenfield Park. Piege a touriste extraordinaire. <br><br>Tous les vieux hippies que j'ai rencontre m'ont raconter qu'il y a peine 5 ans, c'etait le paradis sur terre, avec des gens sympathique pis des backpackers partout. Et puis il est arrive la chose qui arrive ...

... was cold!!! Nath &amp; I went to bed about 8.30pm &amp; at 8.45pm this group of 5 chinese people arrived &amp; had walked the last 2 hours in the dark!!! Pretty scary as they could easily have fallen off an edge. Talked to them for awhile ( they were in the dorm with us) &amp; as we all planned to go to Shangri - La tomorrow they invited us to join them &amp; we could all hire a mini van together.<br><br>

... to Shangri-La on the border with Tibet, or move on and see a different region of China... We read about a number of recent robberies at knife point at the Gorge and the police have been restricting access to towns close to Tibet. In addition the only airline which flew out of Shangri-La was recently grounded and has a bad safety record, so we decided to fly to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province.

This year I'd been thinking about getting a dog. Not sure exactly why. Maybe some male menopause thing going on. Thing is, I think I am more of a cat person than a dog person. Or I thought I was. Dogs always seemed either too aggressive (I got my knee scarred from a dog bite) - or too needy. And then there was the dog owners: looking too much like their dogs; unable to maintain normal human relations so resorting to having a dog (buying their love with ...

Well needless to say i totally skipped the cycle ride in this town! my bum still needed more rest! Me and one of the other girls decided to take th opportunity to sleep in and laze around the town all day. Lijiang is beautiful. It is an old town with small cobblestone alley's and traditional style buildings. The town was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1996 and the government rebuilt it in the traditional building style since those ...

... his state of mind. He'd grown up in Daramsala, India (where the Dalai Lama lives), where he was raised as a monk. He later moved to Lhasa. There, he was areested for rising the Tibetan flag in Lhasa's old city. Normally, this means 12 years in jail, but since he had 'Canadian sponsor' (whatever that exactly means), he got out after little more than a year, away from the cell and the daily beating. Now, he runs his little bar and organises the overland trip to Lhasa ...

... an impassable sea of (very annoying) people. It was worth the early start, the town is truly beautiful as the photographs show, but I'm skeptical at the "history" of some of these buildings. It seems almost like a toy town the Chinese government built and declared a "tourist attraction" in their usual way.

... to turn the heater unit on. Except now the lights dimmed - the whole electricity for the guesthouse was being pulled low trying to heat the water. A patter of feet outside and click - the electricity to the hot water unit was cut off. Hmmm.... A cold shower... Still, Glenn managed it somehow. Back to the room, we sought warmth from the bed doonas and while reviewing the photos - click - the electricity was turned off. Ok, time for bed, we get the hint... Day 2, we had a filling ...