The end of China

After hiking Emei Shan, we hopped on a train south towards Kunming. We decided to get the hard sleepers for our 12 hour ride. When we found our beds there were six Chinese people sitting on them. After we managed to squeeze our big packs in and then sit down, we pulled out our trusty phrase book and tried to make some polite conversation. This is usually the point where we try and say a few words that are spelled phonetically in English, but usually after we get the first few syllables out the laughter drowns out the rest of our attempts. We have found, however, it is not really necessary to actually speak Chinese to have people talk to you. An old, slightly intoxicated, Chinese man kept slapping me on the knee, waving his finger in my face (probably not very polite in China, either), and continued ranting and laughing for an hour straight. At this point my cheeks began to hurt and my throat was horse from fained laughter, so Kerri and I started playing cards in hopes that he would lose interest. This however, attracts more attention from Chinese people than my blond hair and blue eyes, and in no time we had almost a dozen people watching our crazy card game.

After 12 hours on the train, we hopped off at 7 am in a small town where we heard we could catch a bus to our destination, Lijiang. We got off the train, cursing ourselves for not making reservations for a bus when suddenly a woman ran up to us and shouted "Lijiang", grabbed me by the arm and threw us on a bus. How did she know?

We were laughing at our good luck on the bus, and we happily slept for the first hour. I noticed that I was having trouble sleeping because of a familiar smell, when I woke up with a jolt suddenly recognizing the unmistakable scent of vomit and realizing that the floor was slippery. The woman directly behind us had been puking on the floor and it flowed under our seat and soaked the bottom of my backpack. For the next six hours of the bus ride I held the backpack on my lap in the only position where I wouldn't touch the puke. The inside of the bus ride was such a contrast to the exquisite scenery we were passing on the twisty road. The entire drive we wound our way through a canyon of gorgeous rice paddy fields and small villages. Unfortunately the puking was contageous and others around us starting throwing up. I can confidently say it was the longest bus ride of my life.

We arrived in Lijiang and found a super cute little hotel with a view of the city. It looked so nice, we thought about just walking by, but we decided to go in and take a look just in case. We asked the price of a super cute, clean room, and when we heard it was 60 Yuan ($9) we struggled not to smile and Kerri said, "60 as in six, zero?" and I said "60 Yuan, total?" At this point we decided not to ask any more questions and jumped at the opportunity for a hot shower and clean room.

We found Lijiang a little like Disneyland, too cute to be real. But it is quite a site with cobbled roads and bridges over flowing crystal clear little water channels and canals with a snow-capped mountain in the background.

We spent one full day in Lijiang and left the next day for Tiger Leaping Gorge. Not knowing what we were getting into, I was trying desperately to take pictures of the snow-capped mountains from the bus. After using my whole battery and taking 20 crappy pictures with blurry trees obscuring the mountains, when I realized that we were heading straight for them and that they are in fact part of Tiger Leaping Gorge. We arrived at the trailhead at 3:30 in the afternoon and hiked two hours up to "Naxi Family Guest House", which had a beautiful little courtyard and tables with a view of the mountains changing color with the sunset. We both agreed that it couldn't get any better than that.

I found it hard to look at the trail while I was hiking, the view of the mountains was stunning. I managed to convince myself to look at the trail after we hiked passed a few ledges with nearly 3000-foot drop offs to the river at the bottom of the gorge.

We arrived at "Halfway House" guest house that afternoon which had a roof deck with 360-degree view of the mountains and a little farming community. It also has spectacular views out of the bedrooms and the toilets. I had to wear my sunglasses in the toilet the next morning while doing my business so I could look at the mountains. We were so taken by Halfway House that we decided to stay two nights and do day hikes around the area before heading out to Kunming to get our visas for Vietnam.

We are in Kunming right now and heading to Vietnam on a bus in a few hours. After we cross the border, we are going to try and head to a small mountain town called Sapa and do some more trekking.

Here are the latest pictures, videos coming soon....

China, Part Three