Wow, we have been in China a month! It is such an enormous country.
Just this province of Yunnan is the size of France. Getting anywhere
takes a lot of time. We spent a few days in what is known as ancient
Dali, hired bikes and cycled all day down one side of the lake, through
the little villages, all surrounded by huge agricultural areas,
co-operatives I think. So many people working in the fields. The
enormous amount of food this country needs each day is difficult to
imagine, it is really cheap as well so the people growing it must get
paid very little. The rural people are very poor and work all hours of
the day and.night. Not a lot of leisure time. But it is nice seeing the
old men sit around playing ma jong and cards in the evenings and the
women dancing. The little kids r cute they all say hello really loud and
then giggle. I think the photos of Dali are on the last blog, there was
kilometres of fish (whitebait?) being dried on the road on top of shade
cloth. Onto Kunming then another few hours south to see the swallows
cavern near Jinshui. Thousands of swallows live here and migrate south
each year. The cavern is 8 km long, about 1 km open to the public. Big
stalactites & stalacmites. We walked inside for about an hour.
Pretty impressive inside. Huge. The photo of the entrance is quite
deceiving. There is shopping and food places 1 km inside and music and
lights... Then a boat takes you back out. Only in China! Jianshui was a
nicer smaller place. Great street food. Then a four hour bus ride back
to kunming, a 5 hour wait and then we took a sleeper bus 9 hours south
to Jinghong. Photo of Trevor in sleeper. It was pretty good. I slept
well. Only problem was it made good time and arrived at 5 am it was
still dark until 6.30 and it was pouring with rain! It has been raining
all day and night. We are heading to the China/Laos border this morning,
all going well will be in Luang Nam Tha tonight. Si chien China it's
been a great experience.
