One Week in Yunnan

It's cold! We're in Shangri La, in the mountains on the edge of Tibet - the town's at around 3200m. Pretty quiet, not many tourists... can't think why? Everyone we've spoken to has said it's quite safe for tourists here, apart from the cold.

We've been in China for about 7 days now, and really love it. We left Vietnam via a town called Sapa, also in the mountains. Wasn't quite as cold, but very misty, so we didn't quite get the epic views we hoped for. Nice though, and met lots of people from the local villages.

Crossing the Chinese border was fun - we were asked to show the offical all of the books in our bags. If we hadn't have disguised our Lonely Planet with the the cover from an Indian guidebook, it would have been confiscated, and we'd have been lost and hungry - especially since our next challenge was ordering a meal in a local restaurant! It was pretty disorienting to start with, but once we realised we could buy food and a bus ticket, we felt much more confident.

Our first city was Kunming - it's a pretty small city, by Chinese standards. Pretty big by ours. We stayed in a great guesthouse, called The Hump, where we met loads of cool people. Had a great night out in a nearby bar (which sold cans of Boddingtons), then went onto a club with an English guy and his Chinese girlfriend. Great fun - you order beer by the dozen!

We overslept. Woke up the next day at 12 - the same time we should have been checking out. So it seemed sensible to have a lazy day around the hostel before catching our overnight bus.

Lijiang is one of the prettiest towns we've been too, lots of traditional Chinese (Naxi) buildings, canals with fish, and lots of Chinese tourists. Spent a couple of days wandering round the streets taking far too many photographs, as usual. Just outside the town is a beautiful park around a lake formed by a natural spring. The water was perfectly clear and you could see hundreds of Koi carps. The lake was surrounded by some wonderful pagodas, and was really quiet, mainly due to the extortionate ticket prices.

Next stop was Tiger Leaping Gorge for a bit more trekking. It's a great place, with incredible scenery from the snow capped mountains, to the rapids rushing through the 20m wide - 4000m deep gorge. We trekked for 2 days with some really nice English guys we met in Lijiang. Hard work, but great fun, and Kate only freaked out once - after climbing a vertical ladder up the gorge!

China's been really great so far, and we've another 3 weeks to go. Not looking forward to the 25 hour bus journey to Chengdu though, I'm sure there'll be a lot to write about after that!