Luang Probang

I got a nine hour bus south to Luang Probang.
This is a really nice town with a bit of a sleepy french town feel about it.
The colonial influance isn't too much, boule bread and buns basically.
There are lots of tourist here, this is the northern outpost for the Thiland crowd so it's a bit of a different group.
Food prices are high but the locals are still really nice.
We wandered into a funeral celebration and were invited to sit and drink and eat.
The suns had emigrated to the united states and australia and were back just for their mothers funeral.
Then on the way back a group of young monks invited me in help them learn english.

Luang nam tha

Laos is really rainy at the moment, it's the rainy season don't you know.
The charge tourest more for everything system is alive and well in Laos which makes some things significantly more expensive than in China.
Food and drink around double and internet up to 10 times the price.
Accomodation seems fine, back to guest houses after hostels being more the norm in China.
This is a quiet little town.
Unfortunately I hurt my knee which is making walking less fun.
I met two guys with a hairball scheme to build a raft and head down river,
so I watched them building their raft, of course they ended up getting the bus.
I walked up the nearby hill over the town.
These were recently stripped of their forest cover, stumps and trunks still everywhere, and planted for agriculture.
Well not too much to do other than get really wet.

Bus to Laos

So another long bus journey,
this time it's a sleeper bus,
two level bunks kind of comfey.
18 hours later, the next day, without much sleep, we arrive in Mengla near enough to the border with laos.
Get a bus to the border town, getting on 23 hours of traveling.
Check out of China and start walking to the Laos side,
spooky, not many people crossing at all, good thing I met up with a Finish couple on the bus. About 3km after the border there is a place to buy your visa and stamp it.
Laos is really a big change from China. China has loads of people, Laos not many at all. The border town consists of a restaurant and a bus station, which is a tiny open shed in a waterlogged field and guys playing cards waiting for enough people to arrive to fill a bus.
Waited a got a bus to Luang nam tha about an hour or two away.

Kunming

Kunming
So about 9 hours in the train to Kunming.
This is another big modern Chinese city with over 3 million people.
So the best thing to do is to enjoy nights out and Chinese hospitality.
One evening we are standing around the meat on a stick bbq which is fairly ubiquitous in china. I never thought I'd be ofput by dog meat, but when all those paws are lined up in a row, and the head is at the bottom of the pile of parts it didn't really appeal. Well the meat looked old anyway.
So a guy starts talking to us and insists on buying us a load of drinks in the nearby fancy bar. As it turns out if you spend over a certain amount, which this guy did you get a hostess for your table. This girls job is to keep your glass topped up, open you bottles with her teeth and chat and flirt to make you feel that it's not just a big table full of lads.
The next night a crowd from the hostel, more fun, gambay!
The next we are invided out to dinner by a group of police officers, off duty but in uniform. They brought us for a rake of drinks and all after dinner,
what a pity my Chinese visa is running out.

Dali

Got the bus south to Dali.
This is another anchient city but is a much nicer place to hang out than Lijiang.
The straight street plan and larger size means that it doesn't have the overcrowded maze feel that Lijiang has.
The new city is a good 16km away and the old city is still mostly a real place but also has many "backpacker trendy" haunts.

We rented bikes for an afteroon and headed down to the nearby lake through warrens of little lanes and through fields, trees marsh etc. Nice to see real rural china.
Lots of little vilages with tiny lanes and no cars,
Loads of people working in the fields with very little machinary.
Manpower is the main way to get things done in China,
it is not uncommon when visiting a temple to come across a load of guys chipping away at rocks with hand tools to get them to the right shape for building.

Lijiang

Lijiang
I thought Zhongdien touristy, but this is touristy on a grand scale only possible in China, the quite large and pretty old town is perminantly jammed with the sun umbrella bearing, photo snapping hoards of Chinese tourists.
You still see the ocational traditionally dressed Naxi matriarc picking her way through the crowd, and ponds for drinking, washing food and clothes (1 each) are still in use as intended.
At the far end the old town is still under construction,
in China they think nothing of tearing down a few blocks that mightn't be old worldy enough and replaceing with old style brand new buildings.

Still though met some really cool people here and am having the very best of times.

Tiger leaping gourge

Zhongdian or sangrila...
So arriving in Zhongdian marks the return to the more heavily traveled tourist trail.
The town is alot bigger than those of the last few days. There is a new part on one side and when you enter the old part you get the impresion every building is used as a souveneer shop or hostel. Walking a bit further in though you reach where people actually live and is like a plesent little vilage which ends as the hills start to climb. We went to watch the locals dance in the square of the new town,
this is a popular evening activity with tibetans and isn't put on for tourists.
Tibetan dancing is fairly simple, a bit like line dancing from the states.

Got an afternoon bus to QiauTou, a small town at the start of the poplar treck in the Tiger leaping gourge.
We searched for a pub, you know drinking establishment with maybe music.
Well they don't know here, following loud music only yeilded more brothels not a pub in the town, so back to the hostel for a pint.

Walked for two days in the tiger leaping gourge.
It really beutiful and the deepest in China, really deep.
Slept in a guest house on the trail mid way and at the end so no roughing it necessary. The trail runs high above the tourist busses which crowd the lower route,
on the second day we decended all the way to the river, which is really powerfull and impresive, kinda cool.

Xiangcheng

5th August, Xiangcheng
Litang is an easy enough place to get to but an awkward place to leave.
With no busses starting here a ticket out on the public bus is difficult to get.
So six of us, me, one from us and four from Poland booked a minivan to get to Xiangcheng.
The jorney was beutiful, from high rocky grasland down into spectacular valies.
Xiangcheng is small and nice, we went out in the evening looking for a pub but following the bright lights led us to two brothels before we finaly found a really cool bar. Entertainment seems to always include karaoke, dancing and then traditional dancing.

We walked up to the monestary the next day and chattet with a few monks as we sheltered from the rain.

Next morning the 6am bus to Zhongdien, or Shangrila as it has been renamed after a place in a book to attract more tourists. This road is unpaved a pretty spectacular, we only got stuck in the mud for an hour and arrived into town about 5:30pm

Litang horse festival

Day 1
The festival opens with a gallop through the crowd by the horse riders.
Then it's a parade. All of the traditionally dressed groups of dancers are, of course, preceded by chinese flag and machine gun bareing representitaves of the chinese army hmm. Then a bit of dancing.
Then a show off firing of these giant military weapons, you know big ones that stand on the ground and chinese tourists pose with for photos.

Then comes the horse riding stunts.
Riders come tareing down the runway then lean sideways off their horses to pick up ribbons attached to prizes from the ground. The prise is usually a pack of cigarets.
There is also some who place an arrow in a pile of turf target or shoot it.
The most impresive is where the rider puts both hands in the air and leans backwards and to the side untill he is dragging along the ground and then pulls himself back upright with only stomack muscles, kind of impresive.

What also leaves an impresion is the method that the cinese police use to move the crowd into position, back half a meter or so.
No "would you mind" or words at all for that matter,
it's just run in with a belt or a big stick whacking people left right and center.
Or just punch them in the face, don't wory no danger for tourists though, any punches inadvertently aimed at a westerner will be redirected at the last second to the nearest tibetan.

There is a festival atmosphere like a rock music festival in the west.
The toilet is a big pit with half logs bridging it to balance on.
Quite the communal experiance.

It's common to be invited to eat at the tent of friendly tibetans.
They wait for you to finish before starting, like to have photos taken and chat.

The crowd is really cool,
a big gathering of tibetan people, load of cool traditional clothes and interesting characters. Long haired tibetan cowboy types and orange hated monks abound.

The weather is quite extreme, one minuite bakeing sun burns you in less than five minuites, then clouds come it's frezing cold and there's a hail shower.


Day 2
The day starts with the long horse race, at the end the ground is really bumpy and wholey so the finish is quite slow but there is great excitement at the result.
More crowd management as described above.

The afternoon brings a dance competition,
Although nice and colourful after a while all the dances are the same so it starts to become a little boring. Never fear the police decide to make it a bit more interesting by coming into the back of the crowd with belts and sticks again.
This is usually taken with alot of laughs and good humour by the tibetan crowd but this is the last straw so with alot of whooping and rocks the crowd chases the police and army out of the festival. At the road the police let off a few shots into the air to say come no further, so there is a stand off with the police excluded from the festival.
The dance competition continues without the crowd encroaching into the dancing area unduely.

We were invited to shelter from hailstones in the tent of a tibetan living in india with perfect english. He said that there had been someone shot a killed by the police in the morning and that the race was "awarded" to the only chinese entrant.
This could explain a bit of the crowds displeasure.
This sort or inforamation is never in the media and word of mouth is all you have.

There are many tibetans living in india,
it takes about a month to walk acros from Lahasa at night without flashlights.
This guy said he went when he was twelve.

Day 3 and 4
The festival continues peacefully with no uniformed police presence.
Singing danceing and more horse riding stunts like above.
Sideline activities include trading in horses area, gambling on dice, roll a ring onto a prize game etc, food tents and of course sitting and chating, all very cool.