Pandas, Sichuan Cultural Show

A surprisingly straightforward journey using the very-frequent local busses got us to the Panda sanctuary nice and early during feeding-time and before the crowds. The Pandas were the cutest, most-cuddly looking things. For the most-part they were content to find a nice sloping bit of land to use as a back support and chill there, chewing on bamboo. A couple in the adolescents enclosure were a bit more active - bombing about the fields climbing trees - and as Martin rather-excitedly captures on video - having a poo! It was great to watch some real-life animated teddy-bears. The film at the centre showed us that they were actually all cuddly with their human carers too!

There were also some significantly more active Red Pandas, which seemed to have more in common with Limas than the Great Pandas. In fact about the only similarity seemed to be that they both ate bamboo!

That night it was time to get in touch with the traditional local vibe in the form of the Sichuan Cultural Show - a little comedy, tricks, puppets and fire. The first display was all about a mother trying to ward off some boy making advances on her daughter, the second was a girl who was awesome with a diablo and could juggle plant pots and tables with her feet. Then it was the turn of some hand puppets with amazingly dextrous hands which could throw and catch scarlfs and even breath fire. Next a man's wife made him pay penance for being out late by crawling under tables with a lit lantern on his head - a bit of a harsh punishment I feel! A mask-changing and fire-breathing extravaganza topped-off the night.

Back at the hostel we thought we better just see if our bags were underweight for the flight the next day as we'd picked up loads of things since we started travelling. Our nearest scales were at the local chemist's, so down we trundlesd much to the amusement of the hostel staff!

Wu Hou Shrine

Taxis are plentiful in Chengdu, but all are taken and those which aren't don't want to pick up a couple of skinhead westerners, or if they do its because they're going to try to rip you off. We walked nearly 5km finding this out until we eventually gave up on our plans to go to Huanglong Xi - the village used as the filmset for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Instead, as recommended by many people we headed out to Wu Hou Shrine. It turned out to be a strange combination of gardens, pavillions, halls, tombs, shrines, mini-museums and even a theatre. One particularly bemusing attraction was King Lin Bei's Mausoleum, appearing confusingly close on the map to the bonsai garden we were trying to reach. It was nothing more than a walled circular path around a small hill with only one entrance - so we got to walk straight back out the way we came having seen nothing more! The temple and the theatre were both quite impressive though which made up for it. In the theatre some woman tried to sell us an ear-cleaning treatment using what looked like a tuning fork...I think I'll recommend to our piano tuner that he should diversify!

Next to the shrine was the "Street of Famous Snack"- which although another total Disneyworld exploitation, it was quite fun to try a few weird things - fried ice-cream and some "Big Bombs" - doughballs in a sticky and sweet sauce. Both were very good though I've always prefered my ice-cream without chili!

We came back via Computer Street where computers sseem to be selling by the bucketload at the moment going by the flocks of locals carrying and pushing boxes all around. With good laptops going for GBP400 you can understand why! Lucky buggers!

After our juicy burgers for lunch we continues our relapse to western food with steak and chips, soup and salad, as well as a drink all for GBP2.66 - bargain!

Chengdu Day 1

Chengdu day 1 was a quiet affair - a quick walk along the river and past a rather unimpressive rocket illustrated on my map and on to Watson's - the only shop chain in China which sells deoderant - smelly buggers! The garish purple and pink gynaecology hospital amused our simple minds and then we dipped into an exhibition centre, seemingly all about Chinese money and buildings, though we couldn't read a thing. Well, apart from the fact that inversting Y100 at 100% interested nets you Y200 - show me to this bank!

On walking by the Science and Technology Museum we found it to be totally vacant - we couldn't decide whether this was trying to accurately portray Chinese acheivements to date in this area or what goes on inside the mind of your average gormlessly-starin-at-westerners Chinaman.

The final highlight of the afternoon's trip was what at first glance appeared to be the McDonald's Hotel - a free BigMac on your pillow every night anyone?

The night was rounded-off with 1-1/2 films from IMDB's Top 250 - Hotel Rwanda - a film which really makes you wonder, and part of Twelve Angry Men.

Journey to Chengdu

The nightbus arrived 3-1/2 hours early which explains why the ride was so damned bumpy, hence why I hardly slept. We foiled the taxi driver's scam getting the nearby bus to the railway station where we got to sit and wait from 4am until 9.10am for our train, well brokwn by a brief breakfast shopping trip drom which I returned triumphantly carrying bauzers and apples. Yum. By fluke our train was a sleeper so we finally got some rest.

Chengdu taxi drivers are nutters - no sooner had I got both feet in the car and we were off - before the door had even closed behind me. In and out of traffic we weaved and after narrowly missing being side-swiped by a truck (fortunately he slammed the brakes on) and ducking down some dark, narrow back-alleys with an abstacle course of telegraph poles planted along the length of the tarmac we came to a sudden stop outside Sim's Cozy hostel. Amazingly we had a DVD player in our room here so we made the best use of it watching Dodgeball followed by Saw 2 - possibly a bit gruesome for bedtime watching!

Ganden Monastery and a rammed afternoon

On 16th November, on the way back to Shangri-La we got to learn all about how to get your problems resolved in China - you call the Mafia because their bribe is less than the police! That's where Xin had been in the morning before we set off on the trip - sorting out a problem some cowboy builders had caused his friend...via the Mafia. Nice. Amusingly enough though the Mafia are scared of the monks - probably because there's about 7000 all wielding swords and apparently they're not scared of dying. So when one of them strays down from the monastery, uses one of the Mafia's prostitutes and then refuses to pay on the grounds that he is a monk (I think the monk might be missing the point here), the Mafia are left powerless to do anything. In fact within Shangri-La there are four groups you don't want to piss-off - the monks, the mafia, the police and the army, which has a huge base just outside town. Annoy the wrong policeman and you might find you've also got the mafia on your back - there's a little bit of crossover here! And then if you've upset enough people and decide the best course of action is to leave town you've got to watch out for the Tibetans who all carry swords and daggers and aren't exactly hesitant about pulling them out in the heat of an argument.

Ganden Sumtseling Monastery lies nestles in the mountains on the outskirts of Shangri-La. Its a monastery of some 7000 monks and two living Buddhas. With three temples of various ages at the top of a huge flight of steps it was quite impressive. There were also plenty of false monks on hand with their prayer wheels begging money.

In the first temple there was probably the most well-looked-after Buddha we'd seen so far - not just because he was well polished but because he had seven bowls of water to keep him from thirst (hunger too apparently as some were supposed to represent fish and other foods) and hundreds of butter candles keeping the place warm in conjunction with the huge yak;s hide over the doorway.

The entranceways to the temples were decorated with the overlords of the four corners of China - each bearing a different implement - swords, umbrella and two others. Another painting depicted the patient elephant versus the clever monkey learning Buddhism - the elephant taking his time and beecoming pure whilst the impatient monkey thought he could find a shortcut but failed. Xin told us he always tells students this story. A circular design in the second temple shower the Earth split up into six segments, with heaven at the top, hell at the bottom and something which is supposedly better than heaven off to one side. I was surprised to see photos of the Dali Lama around the temple and even in the hotel we'd stayed at the previous night. So long as they're small photos and not on public display I'm told the authorities don't bother you, well at least that's the case outside Tibet.

The rest of the day was a bit of a mission - we got Xin to first take us to the bus station where we booked a 5pm sleeper, then to lunch (more fried yak's cheese and bread - yum!), then the PSB to get a visa extension, then to buy a sword, then to pick up our luggage, then back to the PSB to pick up our visas before finally getting dropped-off at the bus station. And we managed all that in the 2-1/2 hours we had before the bus went! This time there were five of us crammed into the beds at the back of the nightbus. Although one moved eventually that didn't have any useful effect such as lengthening the beds so you could lie flat and it didn't really help with the width either as there was a vertical metal ladder splitting the two beds...great!

Meili Sunrise, Ming Yong Glacier

Xin woke us up early - as soon as he realised how lucky we'd been in getting a beautifully clear morning for the sunrise. It was spectacular - starting with just the snow-covered mountain peaks glowing in the black sky, slowly they brightened and then so did the sky, and then the pink morning sunlight caught the tips of the mountains and the whole scene was incredible. Even some Buddhist's best efforts to spoil the scene by putting smoky stuff in the kiln didn't work. Having said that you can see why he might have wanted to make it warmer - it was surely below freezing.

The challenge after our "British Breakfast" was to climb the steep horse path of Meili Mountain up to Ming Yong Glacier. We climbed up amidst the autumn colours again (for about 1-1/2 hours) past the upper mule station and then it became evident why we couldn't go walking on this glacier - there wasn't a flat part in sight. The whole thing was a melee of grey and white spikes and gullies, twisting its way down the mountainside - probably rather easy to fall into!

Once again, at the top viewpoint we were snagged by a couple of Chinese from Guangzhong, who wanted us in their photo. This time however we also have photographic evidence of their strange desire. The way back down was no less rewarding for paparazzi with another two groups wanting pics - the first one accusing us of looking like John Coffee (who?! - I can only think of the dude from Green Mile and he's huge and black) and the second telling Martin he looked like Phillip Schofield - a definite resemblance there hey Martin?!

We stopped for lunch and a brief glimpse of the film "Heartbreak Hill" at a restaurant opposite the biggest guesthouse in town. A guesthouse which now belongs to one of Xin's old colleagues who used to have almost nothing. Not to worry though - becaome a tour guide and get a rich girl pregnant so you have to marry her and with it you get her guesthouse!

Passing through the Tibetan town of Deqin we saw what appeared to be a boned and gutted yak's carcass (but still with tail) hanging outside a butchers. Well it was, except it wasn't a butchers - it was a restaurant. Apparently, if you're Tibetan, the way to advertise that you have fresh yak is to hang it outside your restaurant to coax your customers in - I can't see this catching-on at home. At about this point Xin asked me why we couldn't do this in the UK so I got to explain all about the Food Standards Agency and Health Inspectors.

Dinner was at the same place in Benzi Lan after which we found a hotel with no English name and for once it didn't want our passports (great retreat if you're fleeing the officials). After asking for the internet (there really is nothing else to do once its dark in some of these places) we got led up the darkest, most sinister-looking flight of stairs between two buildings I've ever seen and arrived at...a surprisingly welcoming internet cafe. Don't judge a book by its cover...

Journey to Meili Snow Mountain Viewpoint

After heading out of Shangri-La through the surrounding wild-west-style countryside we reached a viewpoint over the plains and the often-dry Napa Lake...even when its wet it is only a metre or so deep so in reality it should probably be called Napa Puddle. Pretty despite the name.

Next stop, we dropped down a few hundred metres to cross over the Yangstee at the bottom of a steep sided valley. The (only) road then crawled up the mountainsides, sticking to the very edges with double-bends galore. Up through the beautiful autumn colours and on little bridges over mountain streams with the speedo of our Chevy ex-Bank of China can barely making it past 20mph at any point.

For lunch we ate at a restaurant belonging to one of Xin's friends in Benzi Lan, where we ate a selection of dishes including a fried pork ribs dish which had a great taste, but we're yet to find out what went into it frustratingly.

Moon bowl bend was just a little further up the road - allegedly the first bend on the River Yangstee, though I find it a little hard to swallow that the earlier hundred-plus kilometres run straight as if built by the Romans! First bend that Chinese Tour Busses can be bothered to go to makes more sense. The bend was impressive though, even if the mountainsides were a bit grey and barren.

Winding our way up further into the autumnal-coloured mountains we eventually reached the pass at Bamang Snow Mountain at a height of 4290m - and still the mountains towered over us on either side. The icy-cold desolate nature of the site was interrupted by the multicoloured Tibetan-Budhhist prayer flags, complete with the scrolls printed on them, which were strung up all over the mountain-edge. Xin told us they were here, close to the sky so that God(s?) can read them. Each colour stood for something too with blue meaning water, white signifying cloud, red calling for the power of fire, green keeping people in touch with the earth and yellow asking my friend where the answer be a-blowing. Slightly more surprising than the colours of the prayer flags were the Tibetan-Buddhist methods of burial. These amounted to fire, earth, water, sky and maybe another. Fire and earth are self-explanatory, but water and sky were a little disturbing. They both involved hacking the corpse into bit-size chunks and either dropping it into the local lake or river (for the fishes to eat?!) or leaving it on a mountain top (for eagles and buzzards to consume). A photographer-friend of Xin's had seen the preparation for a sky burial once, following which he was unable to eat for four days!

We then dropped down through the pass, again gripping the sides of the mountains en route to our stop for the night at the North Star Inn at the Feilai Temple viewing platform for Meili Snow Mountain. Our trip was slowed a little by what is apparently "typical Tibetan attitude" - stopping a truck right in the middle of the road for unloading, leaving no option for people trying to get by - sounds like Africa!

Much to our amusement we found out that night that ginger sweet water, brown sugar tea, ginger tea and ginger coke all fall into the same class of drink as vodka redbull - an anti-altitude reaction drink...drink enough and you'll forget you're at altitude making cliff-top walks perilous??!

Sheltering in the warmth of the restaurant that night we had our Emergency China Crisis Assembly. The problem - on trying to figure out our schedule for doing the backdoor route we suddenly realized we were going to end up with nearly four days sat on a bus with only about two quarter-days for sightseeing. That didn't sound like a holiday. After looking at four different options it seemed a 13-hour nightbus followed by a 14-hour train journey was the best route to Chengdu and from then on we'd use flights as they weren't much more expensive than trains and a damned lot quicker! Plus this way we got to stay an extra day to visit the glacier.

Shangri-La, cold weather shopping!

Mama Naxi saw us off on 13th November with a good-luck miniature parcel of tea each following my two (Y2) banana pancakes I ordered - one for breakfast and one for the road. After small mountainside passes, three hours on a minibus saw us to what was starting to appear like Wild West territory. Huge log cabins and barns were clustered in small settlements behind hills on the prairies, whilst huge woolly cattle roamed the plains and along our road which cut a straight line over the dust to Shangri-La.

Shangri-La itself was a cold place, not helped by Harmony Guesthouse's "Genuine Tibetan" ie shed-style accommodation, with outside shower and toilet! We had a quick scout-around, seeing the outside of the controversial chorten with its large column of revolving concrete. Easy to see why the locals aren't happy with tacky tourist gimmicks like this, if only they applied the same level of taste when deciding what to sell in their shops!

We went for dinner in a Tibetan-style lodge which reminded me more of a ski-lodge than anything else - probably because I was wearing every available layer including my ski jacket and I was still sitting as close as possible to the toastie-warm clay pot fires. A couple of huge plates of roast beef and rice and a pot of incredibly-strong but very good fried yak's cheese later and we were finally warmed-through.

Between admiring and playing with all the swords on show we went looking for even more cold-weather gear. I couldn't resist salopetes for less than GBP10, especially as my legs were by now the coldest part of me, having wrapped-up in a T-Shirt, a hoodie and two coats for our wander and still not feeling particularly warm. All in my size seemed to have been swiped though so the hunt was on! Minutes after Martin left for home I found them in a shop, owned by a guy called Xin. His English was excellent and he started showing me which items were real, which were fakes with good function (ie when the factories use up the material at the end of a contract for real ones) and which were fakes with practically no function. After a torrent of questions I now reckon I'm a good authority on detecting the authenticity of outdoor-wear! When I started asking about what was worth seeing around here and how best to do the backdoor route to Chengdu I found out he was a tour guide as well as a shop owner so we started discussing how much it would cost to visit Meili Snow Mountain, its glacier and various other sites along the way. A quick trip back to our room found Martin asleep and generally in agreement (probably due to sleepiness) with everything I said, so next morning we were off on a guided tour for two days!

That night I awoke several times feeling sick, with my stomach feeling terrible (probably repercussions from the previous night) and being very out-of-breath (probably as we'd risen another 1000m). I'd guess the freezing-cold air in our shed-style accommodation wasn't helping either - we were both wearing hats and mine seemed to be giving me a headache to add to how great I was already feeling! It amounted to the worst night's sleep of the holiday!

Tiger Leaping Gorge Trek and the VIM Incident

That morning was the fir st time so far I'd awoke feeling ill. In fact I was quite concerned I wouldn't be able to do the walk, or, at best, have to make potty-stops every 10 minutes! Never even sip snake wine - its not worth it! A banana pancake and three toilet trips seemed to ease the situation though I definitely wasn't 100% still.

Having left Mama's nice and early (after being screamed at to get moving!) some heavy consultation took place between our driver and the lifesize Team America puppet driving the se cond van, taking up a good 20 minutes whilst sitting no more than a kilometre from the guesthouse. Having witnessed this concerned exchange, and being completely bemused by it, we kept a close eye on him for the rest of the journey, expecting him to break into the Team America emergency signal at any given moment!

We could see the dramatic snow-capped mounta ins of Tiger Leaping Gorge's southern side, towering 3000m above the river which was already at 2500m above sea level a long time before we got there. After getting student discount on my entrance fee (I must remember to remove the valid-until date) we began our climb, quickly stocking-up on snacks.

We had hit the gorge just as the leaves wer e turning for the autumn, which made it all the more beautiful with the strong contrast between the many colours of the trees and the grey and white snowcapped mountains behind. Following a vertical climb from 2,700m to 3,700m over the course of 28 bends we reached the most famous viewpoint on the gorge, where paying a local Y15 each gave him ambitions to be the most prolific photographer ever to visit Tiger Leaping Gorge - throwing himself on the floor and directing us to move about the cliff-edge for all the best angles!

The rest of the walk was significantly easier than the climb which had put our 20% faster-than-average walking speed (according to the sketch maps) back at normal pace due to a multitude of necessary stops to catch our breath during the climb. Too bad Jamie - or can we still manage it all in one day?! Cummon' Team!!

The walk took us through little guesthouses and resting places in rural unspoilt villages, goats which we surprised along the footpath and others being hearded by the locals. That night we stayed at the Halfway - the guesthouse Michale Palin stayed at on his BBC tour along the gorge. We even found where he signed the visitors book (now isn't that exciting mum?!)

Next morning I was up before the sunrise to see if I could capture any great photos along the valley, though it would have been equally good to just laze in bed and watch the sun lighting up our amazing view of the snow-capped mountains. Frustratingly the sunrise was happening mainly on the other side of the mountains!

A healthy portion of oatmeal porridge and museli with fruit and yogurt saw us on our way back out along the ridges of the steeper part of the canyon, by way of waterfalls and pick-your-own weed. At lunch we stopped at a place where a guys had clearly been slowed by picking more than his fair share!

Having been told about the Sakura Inn that morning by two Israeli women we'd met, after a few Y3 (20p) beers at Mama Naxi's following dinner we went to check it out. It turned out to be a great little venue. People at the front on the top floor were engaged in a no-prisoners-taken shouting match with the bar opposite, whilst at the back people paid to either sing along to the resident guitarist or if you're one particular old bloke - get on the bar and dance in a dress. Go figure.

A few coctails and beers later and we realised we'd lost Martin. Not to worry though - all we needed to do was look for the noisiest drinking circle and there he was having just won his third downing competition against a local! Eventually it happened though - after seeing-off his last contender he had a Vomit-In-Mouth incident. Fortunately Alexis' reactions were instantaneous as she grabbed the camera from her pocket and caught the look of surprise and disgust on Martin's face, just microseconds before he ran for the bathroom! No language was needed to explain to the Chinese what was wrong with him - one look did it as they let him push past them to the front of the queue and the waiting sink! Then it was our turn for dancing on the bar (now a total free-for-all) and completely clearing a table of its 30 or so glasses in just one game of "What the F**k". It seems we made quite an impression as Jamie and Alexis were identified later that week at a hostel as the glass-smashers from Sakura Inn!

Convinced he hadn't done enough damage already, we lost Martin and a couple of our more foolhardy lads to a pub crawl challenge against the locals. Martin and the keys keys for my room that was, so come home-time, having clomped about the hostel for halg and hour trying numerous ways to break into my room I ended up having to settle for getting screamed at by some scary Swiss girl who rather liked her sleep whilst (well I thought at least) quietly finding a spare bed in Andrew's dorm. "Shut your whinging you psychohosebeast" or similar words probably left my mouth before drifting off.

Lijiang or Disney World?

10th November and four hours door-to-door got us to Mama Naxi's guesthouse in Lijiang, albeit by way of some serious red seats with a matter of only a couple of inches clearance from the floor and completely no room to either side due to the whole shoulder-width issue and the backseat issue.

Lijiang, when we got there, reminded us of Disney World with its streets of newly-built log cabins and water wheels and something that resembled Big Thunder Mountain rearing up behind! After climbing it for a view of Snow Mountain from Jing Lian Temple (now converted into a hotel) we headed through the town's maze of streets covered in Chinese tourists looking particularly cool doing things like paying to dress-up and sit on horses, pose by waterwheels or even snap incognito shots of me! Weirdos.

Mufu Palace, in the South of Old Town consisted of building after building marching up the east-facing hillside. After walking through "Filthy Arch" you next reached "Affair-Discussion Lobby" - suspect and not particularly subtle for the owner's wife if you ask me. Another four beautifully-ornate buildings lef us up to the temple at the top. My particular favourite was the "Thousand-Volume Book Building" where I got in trouble with a psychopathic ranting-in-Chinese lady for picking up and looking particularly menacing with a pole-arm-spiked-mace. After a brief glimpse of some unimpressed "no photos please" Taoist monks at the temple on top of Lion Mountain we eventually wound our way back to Mama Naxi's.

Dinner, and for that matter anything, at Mama Naxi's is a whole experience in itself. It is like everyone staying there is back at school - getting told where to sit, where we will eat and where we will visit. "Tomorrow you go Tiger Leaping Gorge, tomorrow night you stay in Halfway and day after you come back to Mama. Pay Y120 for minibus back." It is very homely with all her daughters and relations running around after you and your amazing-value Y8 meal, whilst Mama and her understudy keep order with domineering shouting. We got chatting to Alexis and Jamie, a couple from Cardiff Uni and a guy from the USA who bore a distinct resemblance to Kim the Queen from Dali. With beers at Y3 a bottle there was no rush to leave in any hurry for the Sexy Tractor - advertised by its owner who also ate at Mama Naxi's.

When we did leave someone thought it would be a good idea to bring along the snake wine which we still hadn'e managed to drink since Hoi An (Vietnam), and had now travelled well over 1000km. It provided the bottom centimetre of the donations glass, though after only four people had had a taste of two separate glasses its use was vetoed. What we initially thought was only mist due to being shaken on our travels actually tasted and smelled more like it had turned...and we were quite certain the snake's head was fully submerged when we bough it. Compromised seal?

The Sexy Tractor was more homely than a turn-on providing warm surroundings to chat about all things Uni and chat to a couple of Danish girls who'd got locked-out of Mama's the previous night about a homestay trip to the Great Wall which sounded well worth doing.

Wuwei - Kung Fu Shaolin Stylie!

After a worrying few minutes where we could not wake Petro from his morning-after sleep, somewhere deep inside the Lazy Lizard he eventually emerged and took us straight to the bauzer shop (a Chinese meat-inside doughy pastry delicacy) for breakfast and into the waiting minibus destined for Wuwei Monastery.

No sooner were we there and we were straight into the routine we would be living for the next week, which went a bit like this:

• 05:30 - Get woken-up by inconsiderately loud ringing of a ginormous bell, all of a few metres from our bed. This was followed by nearly an hour and a half of Buddhist chanting. All-in-all good reason to pop in some earplugs in the total darkness and try to get back to sleep in the icy cold morning.
• 07:00 - Morning run to waterfall and run back with a rock on your head, ready to be used in the building of the monastery! (Missed on all occasions due to ear plugs put in at 05:30.)
• 08:00 - Breakfast - eat as much noodle soup as you can - you'll need it later! Occasionally we were lucky enough to get bauzers and rice pudding which totally rocked.
• 08:30 - Wander about aimlessly thinking about doing things like having an icy-cold shower under the tap or make use of the toilets cleaned by mountain dogs which ate the solids. I definitely preferred the ice-cold showers to the stench of the open-sewer toilet - smelling of soap beat smelling the rear-ends of the entire troop of monks and construction workers (who shat on the floor rather than in the sewer), but alas eating high-fibre vegetarian diets requires multiple visits to avoid embarrassing moments.
• 09:00 - 2 hours of warm-ups as follows:
• 15 individual stretches (50 repetitions each)
• 5 back and upper body stretches on a block with you partner stretching you (hold for 50 seconds each)
• 11 individual stress positions (hold and stretch further for as long as you can take it)
• 3 3-person leg stretches (hold then stretch a little further for as long as you can take it)
• 33 basics - repetitions of basic Shaolin evasions and attacks whilst moving down the length of the temple.
• ...by now you feel like you've done plenty and just want food and rest!
• 11:00 - Learn some forms! Martin and I both had one-on-one tuition, learning Shaolin Quan first, after which I went on to learn Eagle and Martin learned Mantis.
• 12:00 - Lunch finally! Eight people sit around a table stocked with a huge bowl of rice, refilled whenever it emptied, a potato and (some) root vegetable soup and an array of smaller, more tasty dishes in short supply, consisting mainly of tofu and mushrooms. Our table almost always finished all our dishes first and sat around chewing on small amounts of rice and soup until the other tables were polite enough to say "Ah mi tofa" (Give me tofu!, or maybe life is suffering) and leave, allowing the raiding of their dishes to commence.
• 12:30 - This is about the only free time during the day when we have enough light to do anything other than sleep. After getting told not to play guitar in my room on day two as it breaks rule 271 - thou shalt not hear music unless it be gongs and chanting, I was reduced to reading or diary writing alone.
• 14:00 - Quickly chomp down a Snickers bar and head for extra individual training if you fancy it. I won't lie and say I did it everyday (its amazing just how much you legs can ache), but it did give us a chance to go through both our Hung Leng Kuen and Shaolin stuff and play with some weapons!
• 16:00 - 1-1/2 hours of warm-ups and basics again, though slightly reduced without the upper-body block stretches.
• 17:30 - A final few minutes to learn a few more movements to your forms...well that is if your brain can take anymore after a massive crash-course in stretches and basics requiring sustained concentration for far longer than the usual two hour stints back home. We tried to cram just that little bit more in though!
• 18:00 - Same deal as lunch, though with the added bonus that the monks need to start they're prayers at 18:30 so the wait for the tables to clear is shorter, though conversely the food on our table disappears more quickly. After they're gone us hawks more in!
• 18:30 - Gongs and chanting...again. Nearly 35 minutes of usable daylight remains, well outside at least. Options amount to take our guitars and go into exile outside the monastery grounds where we can play wrapped in all the cold-weather gear we can find...or keep warm. I played guitar three times which I thought was highly commendable.
• 20:00 - Gongs and chanting finally stop. My room is directly below. Try not to choke on the jostick smoke filled air or the inches of dust which lie in my room whilst trying to keep warm enough to fall asleep, caked in the grease and sweat of the day's training.

After day 1 this is what I thought...

***VIDEO: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-886028843783062491&hl=en ***

Learning to live without electricity wasn't so bad - it just meant you always had plenty of sleep - though quite often your body would be waking you up at 2am if you went to bed at 8pm! Living without showers however was completely wrong - requiring upper-body-only showers under the tap which kept me "smelling so good - better than the girls in face" according to Omer. All it was was soap - and a little dedication!

I'm so glad I'd done some Kung Fu training before going to Wuwei though as there was a definite lack of teaching the application, but from what we could work out and what Omer and Nadav had learned we had a pretty good idea. I think the most notable problem with the school was the lack of teaching by their Shifu. Instead teaching was left up to an 18-year-old called Shimmy, who was good, but at the same time still very young and with no-one to watch over him he didn't have any incentive to correct every little mistake of the younger ones. As a result kids which should have been awesome martial artists were just mediocre.

I don't think I've ever ate so much tofu in my life, well and snickers - though Martin did significantly better me with 24 in just a week!

After having talked and quoted Fat Bastard for nearly a week, Friday evening we headed firstly to a few essential washing duties (ourselves and our clothes) and then back to Stella Pizzeria with Nadav, Omer and two others for a spot of Goldmember! Then followed a Chinese massage and then sleeping all cuddled in electric blankets - definitely a good way to thoroughly relax our bodies after the week we'd had!

***VIDEO: The net results: me doing Eagle: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5133683203939431873&hl=en

***VIDEO: Martin doing Mantis: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5110867192013952387&hl=en

Cormorant Fishing, Culture Day Party

Thinking we had only a matter of a few hours before leaving for Kung Fu School we grabbed a couple of mountain bikes and headed back down to where we'd seen the cormorant fisherfolk the day before. Although we'd arrived at exactly the same time as the day before,l we'd somehow missed the boats and cormorants so we headed to the big tourist pier fearing huge crowds. However, picked up by touts flapping their arms like the cormorants before the coach park, we found ourselves led a good 2km down back-streets to a secluded spot, closely resembling a spot an Israeli couple had told us about the previous day - what a unique experience!

The cormorant fishing was awesome fun. You basically  stand a dozen cormorants on the side of your tin boat, paddle out into the shallow lake and push them overboard. They dive down, doing all the work for you, catching fish which they can't swallow due to the sting tied around their necks. They follow the boat like dogs wherever you paddle. All you have to do is somehow catch them around the back of the head, drag them into the boat and stroke their throats to eject their cargo of fishy goodness into the waiting bowl. A good battle of will and nerves considering the painful bites Martin warned about!

*** VIDEO OF CORMORANT FISHING http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6690393080701515955&hl=en ***

One of the baby cormorants was having trouble telling the difference between a fish and a plastic bottle, but he was at least enjoying his prize-toy!

A cycle ride tacking through back-alleys got us to the Lazy Lizard in time to find out that Petro was going to stick in Dali until the next morning due to the "Japanese Culture Day Party" still being planned by Chris the owner. Ah well another night with western luxuries couldn't be too bad and we'd still make it up the mountain in time for training the next morning. We checked into our hotel for the third time to the amusement of the staff.

That evening we found ourselves a DVD restaurant for the evening at Stella Pizzeria - I had enchiladas and Martin pizza whilst we watched Shaft, heeding the warnings of the vegetarian rice-based food we were destined to eat for nearly a week at the monastery! The Japanese Culture Day party interesting with a group of bongo players filling the courtyard, a compsci who used to work for Kodak and an American from just outside San Francisco. Party wasn't really the word - chillout would have sufficed!

Epic Cycling Excursion

To get a look at our surroundings we headed out on bikes, all wrapped-up in our new gear for a cold day which just didn't happen. Reaching the lake we found a family of cormorant fisherfolk (though we didn't get the gist of their profession at the time) with a platoon of boats and enough nets to ensnare Nessy.

North up the lakeshore, finally on proper mountain bikes, we had a great time on the dirt tracks between villages and getting lost in the maze of streets in the little settlements. Then for the challenge of the mountains up along some tough tracks and roads, chancing upon the road to Wuwei Monastery and then for a refuelling stop at a village shop, watched by the eleven most despondent aged labourers I've ever seen!

San Ta pagodas with their Disneyland turnstile gates and vast coachparks come souvenir shopping malls once again highlighted the scary way tourism is taking over everything around Dali.

After a huge amount of hunting and disappointment because DVDs were Chinese only or the rooms were in use we finally found a great restaurant which also did great apple pie where we got to watch the Constant Gardener. A bit longer and more deep and meaningful than we'd planned but great all the same.

Wuwei Kung Fu School, Cold Weather Gear Shopping

The 1st of November - a new month and a new missions - to find out how we go about learning Kung Fu (Gong-Fu) around Dali. Our search brought us a few miles up a cobbled track into the mountains to Wuwei monastery where we met a German called Petro who was training there and could fortunately translate between English and Chinese! My most lasting memory of this encounter though was of Shifu in his orange monk's habit, playing with his memory beads - just waiting to hear id he'd for a part in Kill Bill 3! It seemed like a nice school though rather spartan, so I resolved to find some warm-weather gear before going. After checking back into our hotel (we thought we'd be starting training that day) we interrogated Petro some more (he'd headed to the Lazy Lizard for the weekend) and did our shopping with Martin being forced to wear plastic bags to stop the stench of his feet reclassifying new shoes as secondhand.

We tested almost every Chinese pick-and-mix sweet on offer as potential fuel for the week ahead but concluded they were either minging or nugart, which takes a lifetime to chew, removing all remaining joy the sweet might have brought!

Back to the Lazy Lizard again! This time to chill with Petro, a huge pizza and beer each and a strange drug-orientated film called Spun. Two 75ml shots of rather horrible Beiju (Chinese 38% rice-wine) probably didn't aid our understanding.

Dali Street Dancing and Lazy Lizard Haloween Party

Following our second attempt to catch the number three bus to the station (our first attempt was thwarted by the fact the bus turned and went in the opposite direction) we were hussled onto a crammed minibus bound for Dali. Already at 2000m above sea level in Kunming, the road to Dali just seemed to continue up into the mountains. Dropped in New Dali/Dali City/Xiaguan we caught another bus along the new concrete dual carriageway to Old Dali. The entire journey reminded me of the Salkt Lake City to Provo drive, along a commuter belt of new development sandwiched between the Cang Shan mountain range and Er Hai lake, with another tall mountain range reaching down to its far shores. The only major difference here was that the land between the new developments consisted of hundreds of rice paddies tended by dozens of workers.

Old Dali itself, plugged as a backpacker haven, we actually found to be rammed with hundreds of anonymous souvenir shops, well on the main street at least. Unable to fathom the appeal of Dali, beyond the souvenir shops, city gates, dancing and a sheep-pulled cart - all put on for the relentless flocks of Chinese tourists we went in search of food. In the side streets we found what we'd been looking for - restaurants with English menus and even free DVD-watching! We went with one of the Rough Guide recommendations and on ordering two dishes I found I could have been full on only 40p with one of the locals Dali soup specialties - this is more what we're used to!

That night it was the Halloween Party at the Lazy Lizard so we headed on down and got chatting in the luminous-coloured pub to a bunch of Americans and a total queen who called himself Kim - apparently here for his Chinese girlfriend though I remain skeptical.

Planning China and Ordering Food

We spent most of 30th October either sat out on the terrace pouring over a map of China, the Rough Guide top sights and my list borrowed from tour magazines of various internet resources, trying to plan how much of China we could reasonably do in 5 weeks.

Late that evening I went for a quick wander through the maze of streets behind our hostel, via a ridiculously cheap outlet shopping centre (GBP15 for Piere Cardon shoes) and to the Western Pagoda - 13 odd floors of mouse doors and Chinese roofs stacked one on top of the other.

We dived back into the backstreets behind our hostel to find a restaurant with a photo menu - well so we thought until we went inside and it was all in Chinese. We ordered what we thought was sweet and sour pork, beef in black bean sauce and two portions of rice, What we ended up with was two plates of pork and rice with black beans and a plate of steak and chips! Well life could be worse!

Kunming Zoo, Lion & Tiger Tamers, Yuantong Temple

So the 29th October brought us to Kunming. Still not speaking any Chinese we arrived at Kunming bus station rather early and managed to reach The Hump hostel through nothing more than handing their business card to a taxi driver and making the international rubbing thumb and forefinger sign for money to ascertain the price. How worldly we are! After spending a little time on the rooftop garden watching people in the square below learning Tai Chi and the Shaolin dual-bladed sword form we headed in search of breakfast. Dispondant after the whole hassle it had been to order food the evening before and to find that after all that effort they still just wanted to rip you off, we stuck two fingers up to the Chinese con-artists and headed for McDonalds! In all fairness to McDonald's I'm sure there was less fat in that meal than the meat swimming in fat which we'd eaten the night before!

It was then that our first Chinese Characters lesson came in the form of a flier for an opticians. By the power of two brains we deciphered that iC is clearly the name fo a pervert who regularly visits opticians to ensure he can still watch men doing naughty things to snowmen and pregnant women dancing behind TVs. If I see iC I be running! What a strange country!

After running through a fountain, a good (3.3p a cake) Chinese bakery and watching the rehearsals for a dance show we stumbled upon the zoo. The Rough Guide mentioned it in passing as "not the worst zoo in China", which didn't exactly fill us with confidence, but at 67p we figured it'd be worth the splash. What the Rough Guide had failed to mention was the free Lion and Tiger taming show which was totally awesome! It was amazing how similar they were to a domestic moggy when bounding up onto blocks, slipping down slides, rolling over on their backs and even working together to move an oversize hamster wheel around the cage (on inside and on on top!). The absolute comedy part came when they sat up on their hind paws and looked like meercats - a strange sight from something as scary as a lion or tiger! As for the 'worst job in the zoo award', this had to go to the poor pony which had to run around the perimeter of the cage with a rather large and hungry-looking tiger on his back. More than a couple of times the tiger looked set to go for the jugular!

Following the show we had the chance to site next to and touch a real, living tiger. He sat there like our cat Cocoa back home; disinterested in the world and content in his regal splendour which was even maintained despite me ruffling the fur on his head and Martin playing with his tail! Truly a beautiful animal. It looks like we were kind-of lucky...three months later a girl got her head crushed my the tiger.

The carnivore area of the zoo was also full of all kinds of bear which rather worryingly seemed to mainly fill their large stomachs with the snack food and bread which tourists threw to them. It did however make an amusing spectacle to see them climb the cage to catch food or use their really long tongues to grab food which fell just short of the cage, though I'm sure this can't be good for them. There were also a pair of camels which looked like they were straight from the set of Star Wars and Monkey Island no4 which really pulled in the crowds.

Almost next-door to the zoo was Yuantong Zen Buddhist Temple - the main Zen Buddhist temple in the region stacked with a full compliment of worshipping Buddhists with their colossal cargo of oversize incense sticks! The building in the centre of the man-made lake/pond made it quite distinct from the Vietnamese temples whilst all around the details of the temple were covered in buckets of blue and green paint. Other highlights were the twisting blue dragon in the main temple and the strange dog-with-spikes gargoyle that every passing Chinese person petted and stroked with reverence.

That evening we went back to the camera shop where we'd seen a potential for Martin's new camera, and after a good bit of bartering on MArtin's part considering we spoke on word of Chinese (thank you - we realized we knew this from Kung Fu lessons!) and they knew one word of English (bye-bye) we got it cheaper still than in Ho Chi Minh! If it lasts longer than 3-1/2 days then at least it'll be going against the trend!