Step 33 - Home, of sorts.

Okay, so, I've obviously been really bad about keeping up to date with this blog. My bad. I started this post ages ago (would have been around the 13th of 14th of February) but never quite got around to continuing it. I'll update the old post as necessary, then keep on going with the original train of thought.

I'm making another 'out-of-correct-order' post, but whatever. I've currently been living in the new apartment for 3 or 4 days now (More like 18 now...). Things are going quite alright. I saw Byron off at the airport, and today said goodbye to the house mate's visiting friends. So now it's the two of us, looking after a puppy which belongs to what appears to be the soon-to-be ex-boyfriend of the house mate (Yep, ex-boyfriend. Also, puppy wasn't as much drama as it could have been). Valentine's day Drama, of course. For my part, my main <3 interest is a girl back in Perth, who I've never met and only know off the internet (Lol). That's not to bitch about net dating, that's how I met my last girlfriend, just complaining about the tyranny of distance/how lame China is.

So, the new apartment. I'll put some pictures up soon, but it's alright here. My room is large enough, the internet works, the location is fine. I have noticed (and am kicking myself for not noticing sooner) large spots/sections of black mould on the wall. Preeeeeeeetty gay. Going to get onto that ASAP with bleach and/or vinegar (so it turns out bleach is only supposed to be effective against mould on hard/non absorbent surfaces. Apparently it just kills the surface colony, which will resurface later on).

Seeing Byron off was pretty bad. I was very sad to see him go, and seeing him disappear off into the security section of the airport gave me a definite sinking feeling in my gut. It's not just that he's a really good friend, but a connection back to my home, my parents, and all my other friends back in Australia.

Alright, I didn't get much written that first time, am I right? I'm feeling quite a bit happier now, and I'm more settled, but I'm still definitely missing home. Not missing the heat you guys are apparently putting up with though. Screw that 40 degree shit -right- off.

Lijiang was, as I said, not that exciting. Big-time tourist action, expensive admission to all the parks etc, and not necessarily worth it. I'll only go there again if passing through to Tiger Leaping Gorge or something.

I feel like I should point out that Byron kept a much better blog of the trip than I did, and writes a whole bunch better too. Check his blog out, seriously.

What else do I have to say? Hm.

Last night I met a bunch of people and joined in for a game of Axis & Allies. It was the first time I've played A&A, and the first boardgame I've played in a really long time. It was quite fun, though quite amusing though. I was worried about slowing the game down with my inexperience, but out of the 6 people there, 3 were also quite new it seemed. Kind of frustratingly, one guy has apparently been playing with them for awhile, but just isn't getting a grip on how to play. I'm not talking strategy, I'm talking basic rules. The 2 experienced guys would be like 'No, dude, what are you doing? You -know- you can't do that', and the guy would be like 'Oh, okay', and try to do the exact same thing again. Not a cheater, just not really following.

It also happened to be the longest game they've ever played, apparently. We went from around 6.30, and still hadn't finished by 12. That was on the one game. It was getting to the closing stages, but dice roles had gone the wrong way in key battles that would have hastened the end of the game. I still enjoyed it, despite the long play time, and I'm glad to have met the people as they seem like a nice bunch.

I've managed to get my passport in for a new residence permit, this time with minimal fuss. Things could very easily have been ultra-frustrating but they didn't. For example, I needed to find a police station to register that I am now living off-campus. No one really knew where it was, but Gosia had done it before and had a vague idea of the area. Looking on Google Maps, there was a single police station in the vague vicinity of where Gosia had suggested I look. I walked over, and it happened to be the right place, so I got registered in like 40 minutes including travel time. If I'd been trying this when I first arrived, I probably would have been hit by 3 buses on the way there, and it still would have been the wrong place.

Going to the Public Security Beauru (PSB) could also have gone wrong. I went there late on a Tuesday or something, around 4pm. It closes at 5pm, so I knew already I was tempting fate. Anyway, I got there around 4.30 and the place was deserted. Awesome. I filled out the forms and was ready by 4.45pm. And then I sat there for about 10 minutes. The girls at the counter were doing what appeared to be 'make-look-busy work'. Just they weren't very good at it. Shuffling papers, and whatnot. Anyway, 5 minutes to go and one of them sighs, presses a button and bing, I'm up. We get done in a few minutes and I'm out of there. Praise to be whatever lords that control the PSB, for making it less painful than last time. I still ended up waiting like an hour and wandering about 1km before I managed to get a free cab, but still, all in all it was a very good run of luck.

So semester starts again on the 8th. I'm sort of keen and sort of not. Keen, because I get more meaning to life. Not keen, because it turns out I never got used to 8.30am classes.

That's it for now, I guess. Seems like I didn't have much to say after all.

Oh wow, totally forgot it's been Chinese New Year. Too many goddamn fireworks, seriously. They're -still- setting off fireworks at like 3am. It's ridiculous. Great if you like fireworks, but if you're a normal human being, 3 weeks is just soooooo annoying.

Step 32 - Da... li?

Another day, another post. We're still in Lijiang, but soon to leave - tomorrow infact. Can't say I'll miss Lijiang very much, it seems a relatively dull place, more of a stopover location than anything else.

I'm currently trying to remember what I wrote in my last post, while sitting in CreaWriter with the Fallout 3 Soundtrack playing in the background - Old music is pretty awesome. I think my last post finished on the last major event in Kunming, the Stone Forest. So, moving on!

Byron and I left Gosia behind and caught a flight to Dali. It was a pretty short flight, somewhere around 30 minutes. It's the only flight I've been on where they've actually served in-flight refreshments before the plane has actually taken off. I'm not kidding, that actually happened. We're sitting on the tarmac, and two stewardesses pass by with a trolley, dispensing water and crackers. I guess stranger things happen, but it raised my eyebrow.

Dali. It's a town, pretty small. I often see people calling it an Ancient Town. Fair enough. Most people will probably recognise it by the 3 big-ass white pagodas. I know that's probably my most lingering memory of Dali, but they weren't the only thing I liked about the place.

After arriving dismounting the aircraft and collecting our luggage, we took the fixed 90 kuai taxi ride to the Old Town section of Dali. This taxi ride is actually pretty good, as it takes about 15-30 minutes from memory, and gives you some pretty good views of the general area, including New Town, the lake, the mountains surrounding and, of course, Old Town. The weather was yet again clear skies, though the wind was slightly gusty - we watched the white caps breaking on the lake surface as we drove in.

The hostel we were staying at was called the Jade Emu, owned and run by an Australian guy called Dave (from Melbourne) and his Chinese partner. This was to be the best hostel of the trip, with a large clean twin-share room and en-suite bathroom for the reasonable price of 60 kuai per person. I know, I know, twin-share? Why not a dorm!? Basically for hassle-free sleeping and general comfort. It's been nice. Anyway, the food and drink there was also cheaper than The Hump and the Wi-fi internet was available in our room, unlike The Hump. Sorry Hump, I do seem to keep dumping on you... Oh well.

So yeah, Dali. I believe we spent most of our first day there wandering around the Old Town. This was quite nice in itself, though it's all very touristy. You also occasionally get asked by local women if you're into smoking, more specifically, pot/weed. Apparently it used to be more obvious but after a crackdown by police, they're keeping it quite low-key. It's not really a bother though, you say 'No/Bu yao' and keep walking and they won't bother you until you pass by them again. It's our fault really, apparently all foreigners look the same. Yep, the coin has two faces people. I remember having noodles back in Chengdu and a guy in the place kept looking at me. I didn't recognise him, and so kept eating. Eventually he comes over and says, 'Hi... you don't remember me, do you?'. He wasn't exactly impressed than I didn't, and left. To this day, I still have no idea who that guy was, and where I was supposed to have known him from. Whoops?

What I liked the most about Dali was that I felt very... relaxed and at ease. It has a pretty chilled out atmosphere and I really enjoyed that. There wasn't really any hustle-and-bustle that I remember, though things got packed in some areas with Chinese tourists. Probably the most 'stressful' event was asking about 5 places for a top-up-card for my phone, each one passing me onto a new place that, of course, didn't have any and just redirected me. Eventually I got one, and it wasn't so much stressful but annoying.

What else did I see that I liked... a bunch of wall-poster type things that I ended up buying, and a broom-handle BB gun pistol that I didn't end up buying. I'm trying to remember any special food, but nothing comes to mind. The meal I probably enjoyed the most was probably the one Byron least enjoyed, as he complains it nearly killed him. Hmph. Just making him stronger! Better! More tolerant of chilli and other hot spices!

I'm feeling a bit tired of typing so I'll leave it here for today, with the update that I think Lijiang is kinda crap and we're both looking forward to returning to Chengdu!

Step 31 - Kunming Events! Kunming... parents? Damn, no decent titles here either.

Alright, reporting live from Lijiang here, but I'm actually going to write about events in Kunming. Maybe even Dali! Since my memory is a little hazy, I'm going to run through these places out of chronological order. It won't really make a big difference. *edit - As it happens, I actually did write about them in chronological order. Word.*

The place I probably have the least to write about is Green Lake Park. It's located fairly close to Yunnan University, though as mentioned before, somewhat average directions made finding things a lot more difficult. Still, we had a map, we could have just looked at that first... A stitch in time saves nine and whatnot. Anyway, my views on GLP? It's alright, nothing spectacular though. Gosia had made it out to be an epic wonderous place of magic where unicorns graze calmly on rich green fields and rainbows fill the sky. Maybe even it rains chocolate, I forget what she says occasionally. *ANYWHO*, it's basically a small island surrounded by a lake, pretty sure it's man-made. On this island there's a small forest?/bunch of trees, and buildings. See, this is where things get tricky/debatable. Seeing as the island looked so lame, Byron and I didn't actually venture onto it. We'd walked the entire way around the island in like 15 minutes and were getting blasted by music coming from the island most of the way - It looked like there was a wedding happening there. The music was actually kind of funny - Chinese electro-pop and then Christmas carols came on... for a wedding? But still, there were lots of people in black suits, and what appeared to be a bride, soooooo... yeah. Anyway, at hearing we didn't go onto the island Gosia felt suddenly vindicated. If we hadn't been on the island, we clearly hadn't had the full experience. Maybe so, at that current time, I felt pretty good about avoiding the hordes of people dancing to questionable music. I still feel good about it.

Alright, next location, The Temple Of Which I Cannot Remember The Name. It's located pretty close to GLP, so following a quite average fried-rice lunch, we continued on our walk. Directions would prove quite crucial in this segment of our journey. As it turned out, Gosia had marked the wrong place on the map. Kunming's streets were a bit of trouble navigating, so Byron and I spent... maybe an hour or two wandering around. I would like to make the point (whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you!) that I was entirely okay with wandering randomly through the streets - as Byron's semi-guide here, I've felt that I ought to let/make him see some of the crappier parts of China. Luckily I don't have to try too hard, these things present themselves all the time. Back on topic, we eventually reached the marked location. Hmm, a government building, with armed guards posted at the entrance gate. Possibly a military building. After an entertaining conversation with the guards, with such phrases as 'Where are we?' and 'Can we look around' followed with 'Here' and 'lol, no', we continued on our way in what we decided was the best path to what looked like the place we were *actually* supposed to go.

Turned out we were right, so we paid the 6 kuai entry fee and wandered in. Initial impressions? 'Hmm, quite a bit of renovations going on here...' We basically wandered through a construction site, to arrive to the main part of the temple, which has a large moat/pond/pool?, filled with fish and turtles. Oh, my bad. Turns out the pool was getting a do-over as well, as it was drained with the mud getting pumped out. What wasn't getting pumped out? The variety of dead/dieing aquatic creatures that littered the bottom of the pool. Nice. Especially at what I believe is a Buddhist temple? Ah well. The actual temple itself was much like every other I've seen, and Byron didn't seem particularly impressed so we moved on. Again, I can imagine this one is probably better under nicer circumstances.

Next on the list, Byron and I took a half-day trip up the Bamboo Temple. This was one that Gosia had strongly advised against, but we'd decided that it sounded pretty good and we had the time to do it, so we'd just take the risk. Turned out to be the best thing we did in Kunming. We took a cab up into the hills which took around... 30 minutes? It provided some sketchy views of the city, but was relatively interesting as it showed probably the poorest parts of Kunming that I saw. The Bamboo Temple is, unsurprisingly, located in/around a whole bunch of bamboo, or what I like to call, a bamboo forest. There wasn't anything particularly amazing about the temple itself, or the model Buddha inside. There were a lot, but the Lonely Planet seemed to be talking about a different place when it said you could find models of disciples? riding various mounts through the surf (we did see exactly this sight in Dali, so... a mistake of theirs? Or did we just not explore fully enough?). I guess I just liked this place because it was calm, it was peaceful and the weather was warm and sunny with a light breeze. Basically, it was a really nice time to be there.

Finally, the Stone Forest. This one we attended with Gosia, and had a fairly entertaining day. Again Lonely Planet failed us with false information on getting there, but we ended up organising and haggling our way there on a mini-bus. The SF is basically just a big park full of interestingly formed rocks, some quite tall and imposing while others are just basically boulders/pinnacle-shaped rocks. It's entertaining enough to walk around though, exploring the various nooks and crannies which are actually quite small at times. See my facebook pictures to get a better understanding of what I'm waffling on about right now. There isn't much more to say about the SF, but I can talk about the trip back into Kunming. As it happens, for some reason the minibus was also stopping off at a coffee & flower market/building. They asked if we were cool with that and we figured there wasn't any harm. The only harm done was to our wallets. Seriously, this place was jam-packed with delicious little sweets and coffee tastings. I ended up buying some Pu'er tea (not coffee, I know.), coconut flavoured toffee/sweets (OM NOM NOM), and some random waffle thing. I'm yet to open the waffle thing, but Byron has been sharing his coffee-flavoured waffles and they're pretty nice. My passage through the flower market was quite brief, as I have no need of them... but they did look and smell nice, at least. Maybe I mis-spoke there. Flowers are awesome, but I had no current application for them in my travelling situation! Yeeaaaaaah.

Anyway, that's about all I have to comment on for now, I think. I'll get into Dali and Lijiang soon enough, but I will say for now that I think Dali is much more awesome than Lijiang. Dinner soon. I've been eating well everywhere we go... also spending too much O.O

Oh, side note. It appears that music purchased off iTunes can only actually be downloaded once. WHAT DA FRUCK? Seriously, this is nuts. I formatted and now I can't download purchased music again. Now, I'm not entirely as pissed as I might have been because the music if backed up elsewhere, but just the concept that I should have to pay again. I've bought it, I should be able to download it a million or two billion times should I want. In my opinion anyway. God-damn you Apple, god-damn you Steve Jobs. Yet another reason I'll avoid them both as much as possible in future.

Step 27 - We've got company!

Okay so this post has been long delayed, but primarily to the harassment of Kani, I'm going to finish it. I started writing this post while sitting on the roof of 'The Hump' hostel, in the centre of Kunming. I was finding the warm sun on my face and skin a refreshing change, and was enjoying the company of Byron, who's a long-time friend who has come up to travel around Yunnan province with me. We were also joined by Gosia, my future house-mate.

But how did we get to that point? Byron arrived in Chengdu on the 30th of January, around mid-afternoon. Having never actually received anyone from the International Arrivals section of Chengdu Airport, I spent about 5 minutes wandering around and actually arrived at the exit point just as he was walking out. Pretty good timing, right? Anyway we took a quick cab back to my temporary apartment and then wandered around the streets for a bit, having a snack as we went. For those who don't know, flying from Perth to Chengdu takes around 12-14 hours, depending on who you fly with and how long your stop over is (either Hong Kong or Singapore I believe). The point I am making here is that Byron had been up for at least 14 hours with very little rest so he took a quick nap as I packed my bags. Now, you already know that we were going on holiday, but what you might not have known is that I was also moving my gear to my new, permanent apartment (for at least the next 3 months anyway). So this packing was taking quite awhile. I believe it was around 4 or 5pm by the time I was ready, once I was done I roused Byron to come give me a hand.

Concerningly, he was really struggling to not feel cold - I guess that's to be expected coming from 30+ Perth into 5+ Chengdu. He was shivering quite a bit so I was worried about keeping him outside too long, in the cool evening air and worn-down from travel. Of course, it was bloody painful to get a taxi, but eventually one pulled over and we made it to the new apartment. I dumped my stuff and we continued to chill out there for the next 3 hours as the couch was comfy, the air-conditioner was cranked up high and the English tea in the pantry was going down nicely. Side note - Gosia buys English tea, but doesn't drink it. We went out for a relatively tame Chengdu meal of 'Fish-fragrant Eggplant, Fish-Fragrant Pork, and rice'. I think that was it. We weren't feeling particularly creative so hence the two dishes with the same sauce. Unfortunately, Byron didn't much take to eggplant... Fair enough I guess, a lot of people seem to have issues with it, but I love it. Om nom nom. Delish.

As it happened, the French girl who I had thought would have been moved out, was actually still living there. This created issues - Byron could crash on the couch there, but in the morning that would complicate issues as we had a 7:45am flight to Kunming. In the end it was easiest just for Byron to come back with me to the temp. apartment, and share a double bed with me. Lucky guy, I know, right?

So we slept and woke up around 5am, a wonderful hour as you would all know. Light snack of crackers for breakfast and then we were out the door to find a cab to take us to the airport. This had probably been my main concern for the past 48 hours - I'd never been up in Chengdu at 5am, and had no idea how easy it would be to find a cab. As it happened, there were quite a few cruising down our section of the 1st Ring road (For those unaware, Chinese cities are usually broken up by concentric circle highways that emanate from the centre of the city. The first circle is the 1st Ring road, the second the 2nd, etc etc). As usual, the first cab we hailed tried to rip us off. A cab to the Airport from around Sichuan University has generally cost me around 40-50 kuai one-way. This guy wanted 80, and wouldn't use the meter. Fortunately there was an empty cab that had pulled up behind us, so I told the first guy to buzz off and we tried this new cab. He was a good guy, so off we went.

It should be commented I guess that 5am is probably the emptiest I have seen Chengdu looking. I'm sure 4am is probably worse, but around 2 or 3am there still seems to be people out clubbing and whatnot. Or maybe that's just the only times I've been out on the streets at 2-3am... *cough* Moving on!

We arrived with plenty of time and had no issues at the airport. I had been concerned by something Byron mentioned; apparently in Western airports, they don't particularly like big rucksacks/backpacks, and generally glad-wrap them like giant parcels so that the various buckles/straps don't get caught in conveyor belt systems. No such problem here. Not yet anyway, and I've made 2 flights with the bag. So we chilled out and soon we were off flying high to Kunming. The flight is relatively short, around 2 hours. I believe the train ride takes much longer, as the terrain becomes much more mountainous as you head down into Yunnan province from Sichuan province.

So we arrived in Kunming around 9 or 10am to, as mentioned, wonderful weather. Getting a cab into the city was no issue, and finding the hostel wasn't *too* difficult either - it was on the 3rd floor of a building and we approached from the less 'commonly' used side I suspect, as there wasn't much in the way of signage on that front. Anywho, we dropped our bags and promptly went out to lie in the sun on cushions over a stone bench. I'll just say this - coming from the overcast weather of Chengdu, it was sooooooo goooooooooooooooood. As it happened, good old Chengdu was having issues with fog at the airport - Gosia was due to fly out around 10 or 11 but didn't leave till 1pm-ish. She would later regal us with tales of sitting in the plane, on the tarmac, for 2 hours. Being the bastard I am, I enjoyed a hearty chuckle at her expense, and let myself slip further into sleep under the clear skies.

I know I've mentioned the weather/the sky about a million times, but you try living in a city that gets less annual clear skies (or is it less annual sunlight... whatever) than London, and then tell me that I shouldn't be enthralled by this crazy phenomenon that is... nice weather. That seems as good a place as any to leave off - Byron had safely made it to Chengdu, and together we had flown to Kunming. Over the next few days we would visit the Stone Forest (Shi Lin), Green Lake Park, the Bamboo Temple and another temple, the name of which currently avoids me. Mostly, we'd have a good time. When wasn't it a good time? Following Gosia's dodgy directions. But you'll hear more on our journey in due time!

Peace out.

Step 30 - Dali... Dali something. Nothing goes with Dali :\

Okay so here is my first draft post written in 'CreaWriter'. It's basically a tool to try and create a distraction-free writing environment. It sits over the top of everything else that's running with a custom background and if desired, custom sound effect (think soothing sounds). If you *must* keep an eye on things happening in the background, you can set it to be transparent, though accessing them can still be a pain... alt-tab lets you get to them, but they're still not 'brought-to-front', so if transparency is disabled, you'll have access to them but not be able to see what you're doing T_T. Anyway it's early days, maybe they'll make it a bit more open minded/flexible.

This post is going to focus almost entirely on the town/city called Dali, located vaguely to the western side of the Yunnan province. I say town, because where I'm staying and where I've spent all my time here is in the 'old city' part of Dali, which is, you guessed it, the older section. Everything's pretty small scale here - it doesn't feel like there's a lot of people. The newer section is the 'modern' part of town, but I don't know that there's actually a lot to see or do there. Certainly not from what I've seen on WikiTravel or the Lonely Planet.

Anyway, Dali is probably best known to the West as the place with 3 big white Pagodas. I hadn't even heard of Dali, but when I saw the picture of the 3 bigguns', I had an instant feeling of recognition. Today (5th of Feb) Byron and I checked out the Pagodas and associated temple buildings, and had a pretty good time. The weather has been perfect, with sunny clear blue skies and almost no clouds (we did start getting some cloud cover this afternoon, but we'll see how that is tomorrow). The entrance fee is relatively expensive (121 yuan, from memory), but getting a good view of the Pagodas and wandering around the rest of the park/complex was quite awesome. Again, the weather made the experience extra nice. There was a special feeling about as I stood in front of a large temple entrance and a strong gust of wind blew through, rustling the leaves of the trees and ringing the various bells hanging off the eaves of the temple. I had been about to take a picture, but it made me pause and put the camera back in my pocket. Feeling the wind blow, the sun shine, the bells tingle and the trees whisper... It made me happy.

On a somewhat less inspiring/feel-good note, the views available of the Dali area from within the park are quite good, though you can probably get ones as good/better from up in the mountains. That's where we'll be going tomorrow, so I guess you'll find out soon enough how the view is from even higher up :D

Speaking of views, I've been having issues with my camera memory card (xD type). The camera is having no issues whatsoever, but the computer is insisting that it needs to format the memory before being able to read from it. The card is formatted as FAT, the OS is Windows 7. Has Windows dropped support for that? I don't know. All I know is that it's a pain in the ass and hopefully one that I'll be able to resolve quickly and easily - WITHOUT losing all my pictures!

We're staying at a hostel called the 'Jade-Emu Hostel', not too surprisingly it's owned by an Australian guy called Dave, who always seems to be hanging around in the courtyard. I've been wondering if there's anything else that he does or if managing the hostel is his sole occupation. The hostel is just off the main road, which itself deserves some comment.

It is quite epic wide, with 3 lanes going each direction. It feels strange to have such a wide road when most of the traffic that I've seen is small tractors/trucks going about 10-20km/h tops, doing local trips. Now that I've thought about it, there are light/passenger vehicles and buses that pass through, but lets just say that traffic isn't heavy.

Back on topic, the hostel is quite nice. Meals and drinks are cheap and reasonably tasty, the room is clean, spacious and comfortable. Most importantly, it appears the hot water system is capable of maintaining a constant supply of piping-hot water. Oh and there's Wi-Fi access everywhere inside the hostel. Basically it's oodles better than the last place we stayed at, The Hump, located in Kunming. They're slightly different situations though... Jade-Emu's location is good, but The Hump is in the centre of Kunming. Like, the very centre, of a big city.

Anyhow, shout outs are due for Byron, who reminded me to comment that he is super-awesome and for Alex. Nope, not the Stock variety. To my friend Alex, I tip my cap. Dick-butts to the very end.

I think that's about all I wanted to comment on for now. For a quick review of how writing this has worked out in CreaWriter, I'd say pretty good. I haven't done *anything* except writing this post, and I haven't felt the need/desire to check other things. I *will* mention though that it doesn't have any sort of spell-check, which I'm quite used to these days and feeling somewhat apprehensive about not having. Still, maybe this will force me to put more effort into both my spelling and my typing. It's quite late now and Byron's actually asleep, so far as I can tell, so I'll wrap it up and lose myself in some good old fashion slumber. Or something like that anyway.

Sorry about the weird-ass order of my posts! I'll get around to writing about everything eventually! Promise!

Step 29 - Sitting in Sun...

 ... tapping away at my laptop. I've just had a mother and her bubby take a seat at the table behind me. Bubby is actually little kiddy, the more I listen. They're having some brunch.

Gosia and Byron are off changing money and I'm getting some vitamin D for the day. We're planning on going to the 'Stone Forest' today, apparently an epic tourist trap so I'm quite bummed about that. For those in the mood for detailed reading of each day's events, Byron is keeping a much more up-to-date blog.

Soon we'll be leaving Kunming and Gosia behind. Byron has expressed to me that he's a little disapointed we're not taking any trains on this trip, and I feel kind of bad about that too, but at the time I was just thinking of masses of people, crammed inside trains like sardines. Everyone I was speaking to was suggesting not to worry about taking a train, so that's just the way it's gone.

I had fun pointing out the 'water trucks' to B-man yesterday - for those that don't know about them, they are big trucks that drive around the streets, spraying the roads down with water while blaring Mr Whippy style music. The music is probably the only element that makes me like them.

Especially after reading Byron's blogging efforts, I feel like I've lost a bit of my touch. I guess you could call it writer's block, or you could call it laziness. Either works I guess. My battery is about to die so I should probably cheese it.

When I get the time, I'll be redoubling my blogging efforts. When I say 'when I get time', I mainly mean when I'm settled down into new apartment. God I'm craving my own room.

Step 28 - Tiring

Just a real quick update, getting super tired of future housemate already. She followed us down to Kunming and urrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzhhhhhhhhh. I'm tired at the moment so it's worse but I just don't want to see her or hear her voice.

Spent today walking around 1/2 of Kunming with Byron, and it makes me feel like Chengdu is a giant hole. Here it's sunny, clear skies, animals and plants.

Ugh, I'm so tired, going to just leave it at that. These posts are going to be out of order, as I have a post about what we did yesterday that I'll finish later.

Does any of this make sense? Ugh.