Dali

Sorry that the last post was a bit rubbish - this one won't be much better.

We (Ben, my new travelling buddy, and I) arrived a couple of days ago in Dali. After a tedious train ride, only made bearable by sleeping on the luggage racks, and bus ride crammed with Tibetan-looking locals and their produce, we arrived at sunset. Dali has an almost Tibetan feel - this is definitely not the China I was used to - far too sleepy for one thing.

As we wandered the streets looking for the requisite LP recommended guest house, a local man run down the street with a chain of lit firecrackers, scaring the living daylights out of everyone (except us hardened travelers of course).

Yesterday we cycled through the local rice fields. Despite having spent some time now in fairly remote parts of the country, this was the first time that I really felt like I was seeing Chinese farming life for real, unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years. These are the real poor, people left behind in the great push for modernisation. Most don't even own a motor vehicle for taking their rice back to the communal farming communes, instead pulling traditional carts by hand.

I felt pretty ill on the way back (a combination of altitude, sun, a greasy breakfast and cobbled streets conspiring against my constitution), and struggled the make the 18 km ride back. I lay in my bed with the room spinning around me, and for the first time missed not just my friends and family, but home itself. But this morning I feel fine, so we're setting off up the mountain to do some hiking in the clouds.