Wow, I'm finally back home. We had a wonderful 3 weeks. First meal we had once we were back home was...dog. I knew something was up when I saw part of a jaw - with TEETH. It actually tasted quite good - very beefy.
We spent 10 days in Yunnan province, seeing cool things. I got to give my wife her first flight - unfortunately, we didn't have a good window seat, but she was very excited. The flight back was perfect. She took a ton of pictures out the window.
We landed in Kunming and then caught an overnight train (soft sleeper) to Lijiang. Half way there, I woke up with motion sickness. I was feeling horrible when we arrived in Lijiang (fever, headache, couldn't catch my breath, fast heart-rate). She went to the doctor and got me some pills while I looked up altitude sickness in Wikipedia - sure enough that was the issue. The pills helped with the headache and fever, but after a couple days I was fine. Her cousin manages a small hotel in Lijiang and he hooked us up with a beautiful room in a neighbouring hotel. Old town is beautiful with ancient buildings and shops and restaurants everywhere.
We visited Shangri-la - I wasn't really impressed. It wasn't a beautiful city. Pretty new and lots of construction, seemed to me like it was thrown together too quickly. One cool tour we went on here was to a lake - really early in the morning and it was very cold. My wife is from Fujian province - she's used to the warm weather. She was ready to freeze to death. The bus dropped us off and left us on our own. There's a wooden catwalk around the lake - like 2.5 km. When she saw that the lake was frozen, she started getting excited and taking pictures. What was really cool though, the wind picked up and the ice started making the strangest sounds. Growling and moaning and popping. She thought it was echos of a dog across the lake. Very cool. She also got to hand feed chipmunks.
We met some cool foreigners (a young guy from France and his pretty Chinese wife who have lived in China for over 6 years, an American and his Chinese coworker who worked for DHL in China, also a German couple).
We went on too many tours to mention them all, but we really enjoyed Yunnan Province. The history is incredible. The local minority groups are full of character and charm - beautiful and friendly. They really reminded me of our native indians, they have a proud and rich culture and China has embraced their culture fully, not like the way our country tried to integrate or wipe out the indian culture.
I'm glad to be home, but I really wish I could have brought my wife back. Hopefully next time.
