Home Inn (Lanzhou Gaoxin Area)

... greet me with hostility. Unlike the case with the man on the plane, I would be left without an opportunity to explain myself. Han Chinese, complete strangers, who had greeted me with friendliness and had gone out of their way to help me in all the other places I had been in this country, may well resent my presence in Xinjiang. That could well include LX, who at the very least would feel pressure over my safety and possibly embarrassment at my seeing his home at a less than perfect ...

I did some last minute haggling with Luke in Yangshou in the morning....typical bloke needed trousers and a woman to sort it out : o ) it was easier getting a better price when its for someone else. In the aftertnoon we picked up our bikes....hmmm not exactly state of the art, more like state of the ark. Mine had no gears, which turned out to be an advantage as the ones with the 27 gears only worked in high or low and nothing ...

... to go I was told to go home and rest as I must be tired. This was also strange as usually it would be off to KTV or to simply stay put and drink and eat more. I soon began drowning in memories of my time in Gansu Province where I was 'protected' so much that no one drank beer at a dinner. It really is bizarre when you compare it to my time in Guangxi where I was almost force fed Rice Wine by a ...

... slowly become more accessible to outsiders. At the end of last year, the TTB (Tibet Travel Permit), the ubiquitous US$200 per person cash cow, had even been binned. Then a couple of months before I was due to arrive, a couple of folk decide to wave the 'free-Tibet' flag in Lhasa, and the authorities opened their old heavy-hand drawer and pulled out the same strong-arm manual they have been using since the emperors were considered cosmic entities. Lockdown. Everybody who ...

... of the Jigong. The Jigong presents ten big marvelous sites, along with the season change, the clear early morning cloud sea, the dawn peak morning sunlight, the sunset glow, evening glow, the enjoy looking at moon at tower, the cloud top view rain......... Sorry, the photo stops here. The next part is a little on the history of Jigong Shan. Before the liberation ...

... The town itself took us a little while to warm to - the new town is a fairly uninspiring, small, modern Chinese city. The old town seemed to have all the authenticity of a disneyland work in progress (new 'traditional Tibetan' buildings are popping up everywhere). But after a couple of days, we had warmed to the place. We had found a few cosy cafes and bars, seen some of the surrounding countryside and (at least in my case ...

... attacks on foreigners in Alexandra and other areas in Johannesburg. The past week has seen hundreds of mainly Zimbabweans and Mozambicans forced to take shelter around police stations after attacks on them by armed mobs. Mulder said the attacks could be linked to a number of policy failures on the part of the African National Congress. First among these was silent diplomacy towards Zimbabwe, and "tacit approval" for what that country's ...

... walls, the flags, the role and history of the Tower The story is still not known, there is a chance to study section of the look. The car only to 18:00 Kaunda town (in this case is State Road 317 to county and provincial Luhuo Sertar to the bifurcation point), would have come here to change the plan to Ganzi was deserted town on the scene of car-free the burst, with the shuttle can only continue to color up to go through ...

Taking another slight detour we decided to have a few days checking out the Tibetan settlements in the west (towards the Tibetan border). Having endured two six hour bus journeys across what only the Chinese would describe as 'roads' we then faced an alcohol free hang over known as 'Acute Mountain Sickness' - we're over 3000m above sea level ...

... on the walls in their rooms. If you look down, you'll see they even worry about fashion - of course, when you're dress code is a robe only your shoes can say you're an individual... Heaps of pilgrims around which also adds to the experience. Xiahe especially is packed with Monks and Tibetan peasants dressed up to the nines - outside the gates looks almost like a carnival. They all ...