Zuitaiping Hotel Xichang

... village to see the women who are known for "walking marriage"). I don't remember much as I felt like poo.
Eric got up early the next day and bought us tickets for yanyuan. He had wanted to buy tickets to muli but they were sold out. So around 6 or 7 we got up and headed to the bus station. I was feeling mostly better. Yanyuan I wasn't impressed by but we weren't there for all that long. We were just ...

Ten days in the middle of nowhere. Literally!
It was quite an experience, the first time for me to go to the Chinese countryside, a village you cannot reach by car. Really enjoyed it though, wonderful people! Especially some of the older ones. I mean, I couldn't talk to them (some of them could not speak anyway) but just saying hello to them, trying to tell them where I'm going (when I was on my way to the kitchen, that worked pretty well!), sitting down with them and showing them ...

... Puge a small place over the hills.......on the bus this lovely old Yi woman got on...we said hello and other such pleasantaries as best we could in mandarin....she smiled a sweet smile....... then did the biggest spit ever....right on the bus! Thats China.... anyway in Puge we got even more stares...and met some dude who spoke english who insited he showed us around...he refused to let us pay for anything...and proceeded to call me Janet....and ...

... and ended up paying for everything !! Our protests were met with "Dont be Mad, you are our guests" !!! Our excursion today took us across some amazing landscapes and right out into the middle of nowhere .........we got out at a little village , home to the minority Li people (they wear most excellent brightly coloured clothes) In the village we were followed by a small group of locals as we walked around the market.............as the girls did their "shopping ...

... took a bus and a cab to the long distance bus station with Harry (the boy's english name) and his mother, who helped get us tickets to Lugu Lake and checked us into a nearby hotel. After all of this, we thanked them for all they had done, got his number to repay his kindness when we were all back in Chengdu, and told them to enjoy the rest of their holiday together as a family. Since the bus did not leave until the following morning, we decided to look around ...

... of hours into our conversation Liu Yue, the young man, invited us to his home for Chinese New Years breakfast. At first we declined not wanting to inconvienance his family, but after talking to the older man about how having foreigners over his home would raise his family's face, we decided to accept. His mother and father picked us up at the train station at 2am, and we chatted with his mother until about 4:30 when we all decded to get some rest. Before that though ...

... The quake struck the juncture of Renhe District in Panzhihua and Huili County in Liangshan prefecture at 4:30 p.m.(Beijing time). The epicenter was about 50 km southeast of downtown Panzhihua, at 26.2 degrees north latitude and 101.9 degrees east longitude. It was at a depth of 10 km, the China Earthquake Administration said. Quake impact and damage Areas affected by the quake were Panzhihua, Huili of Liangshan, both in Sichuan, and Yi Autonomous ...

Well here we go! hopefully this will work out nicely. Wouldn't that be something. I have arrived in a town called Xichang. I've been traveling with a couple of Aussies and a girl from Malaysia the past week. They have been Teaching here for a year and their language skills have been a real boon. We met in an alley in Dahli after we were 'pursuaded' to have our shoes fixed by some local craftsmen. What started out as a little glue job ended up ...

... decrepit old town area of ramshackle buildings, cheap baijiu shops (3.5 kuai for half a liter!) and toothless old ladies trying to show us places to drink, and general, curious yet friendly atmosphere of a town not inundated with tourists, meant that it wasn't an unpleasant place to spend a few nights. Our reason for coming here, though, wasn't Xichang itself, but the Yi minority villages of the area. Interestingly, many signs in Xichang were posted in both ...

Sweet n' Sour Day Today, all across China, people are remembering the dead. And me, I'm going to fly a kite. It may sound irreverent but flying kites, having picnics and planting trees are all part of commemorating Qing Ming. Qing Ming means 'clear and bright', and falls on the 5th April each year, usually a time of warmer weather. The day before Qing Ming is called Hanshi, meaning 'cold food'. Somewhat appropriately, yesterday there was no power for all the day in most of ...