I spent my birthday in Changdu (Ellie), the capital of Sichuan province, famous for its spicy food. The moputofu and spicy roast potatoes from the hawker stalls will be going in our personal cookbooks. It was a pretty weird feeling when we first arrived in the city as it was the biggest we’d seen in china, actually since Bangkok I guess. And compared to places in Yunnan it seemed so much more prosperous (neon everywhere!) at somewhat of a lost as to what to do (we had intended to head straight to JiuZhaiGou on arrival) we decided to visit the world class panda bear sanctuary. It was a very memorable thing to do for my birthday. I never really understood the panda’s appeal until seeing them up close. They where fantastic! We found a great Italian restaurant for dinner which topped off a great day. It was hard to leave the next day (and not just because we had to wake up at 6am.

ellie

Dali was in Yunnan province. We stayed in a Tibetan style hotel as it was very warm and I was sick. We mostly rested and drank lost of amazing tea. On our last day we went on a adventure to the lake, after being informed we could charter a fishing boat back to Dali via the lake. This would have been possible if we didn’t get lost walking around the country side, through vegetable fields and a couple of villages looking for the jetty. We were also plagued by immense trouble trying to communicate our plan and find the fishermen. After arriving at the jetty we learned that it was to late and we wouldn’t make it back in time. So it was that we set of back to the hotel by bus, content with the sight we had been awarded for our efforts.

We survived! my bum’s still recovering, but we made it to luang Prabang via two days on a slow boat down the Mekong River!… more later
love
E