China Trip
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Kunming,
China
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I arrived in Kunming 50 minutes before the welcome meeting after spending the whole day travelling up from Hong Kong. I had time for a quick wash and to meet my roommate Lucy. Down in the bar we met the rest of the group. Eric, our canadian leader, 2 Lithuanian's, Victorus and Audrais, 2 Americans, Larie and Jennie, 1 Northern Irish Lass called Kate, Lucy, Mark, Alan and Phil from London and me from Scotland. Eric spent a bit of time telling us about what we'd be getting up to and then we headed out for some dinner. After dinner Alan and Phil taught some of us how to play Mah Jong.
It was an early start the following morning for our 9 hour bus journey to Lijiang. I was grateful that Lucy had a couple of spare books. Nine hours later we reached Lijiang. It was a short walk from the bus stop to our hotel. The area of Lijiang we were staying in was beautiful. Cobbled streets, lots of pubs and touristy shops and no cars. We headed out that evening for dinner, via the town square complete with people dancing round a huge fire. We walked along the river, emblazoned the whole way along with red chinese lanterns. It created a simply magical atmosphere, and as Kate commented it was rather like being in the film Spirited Away. We had a very interesting meal of fungus and bees. I didn't eat any bugs but it was rather fun trying all the different weird looking foods (yeah, believe it, I'll eat pretty much anything now!). A few of us ended up in the pub afterwards, drinking local beer and playing lots of silly drinking games - lots of fun - eventually made it to bed about 2am.
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