Day 43

On Thursday morning I got up and went across town on an 8 pence bus ride to the Computer Street. This place has it all and I was after a usb memory card reader for my camera's memory card. I found this device surprisingly easy and got it for just a few pounds - Arjen had paid much more back in Beijing so I was pleased to get such a good bargain. I had a look at the laptops too but I really can't be lugging one of those round with me - it would be so useful though for blogging and internet surfing.

1 Chinese folk exercising on public gym equipment!

When I got back to the hostel I went with Arjen and Audrey to get train tickets for Lijiang. We intend to travel on Sunday after a two day excursion around Chengdu. We found out soon enough, though, that trains don't actually go to Lijiang. Our only option was to buy a ticket to Panzhihua (13 hour overnight train journey) and then catch a 9 hour bus ride from there to Lijiang! Still, Lijiang is where we want to be so that's what we arranged tickets for.

Back at the hostel we caught up with Steve and a few others who fancied eating hotpot. "Not again" I thought! But just as we had eaten Beijing Duck twice for Kasja's benefit we'd be eating hotpot again for Arjen, Audrey, Jack (all Dutch) and Melissa (American). This time was a little different from last time's all-you-can-eat buffet as this time everything was kept on skewers and each skewer we took was charged to our table at 0.1 Yuan. That's less than a penny. Our meal was really hot as before but there was no split-pot, the only option was the red-hot chilli infested waters. At the end of the meal a waiter came and counted all of the used skewers and we had hundreds! Our bill was still really cheap, but we all knew we'd still be paying for this in the morning.