And back again

Well I've had a couple of very nice days in ole Lijiang. Caught the bus down on Saturday. Pretty smooth trip. Saturday night I had a fantastic hot shower, got dressed up (Put on a clean top and jeans) and went out to Prague cafe for pizza and to watch a dvd on their couch upstairs. I was about half an hour into the movie when Hunter called and said, "come out with us, we are going to a bar for a party" I was tired but agreed to do the social thing. Met him and some others who had also joined him and we walked into the new part of town where we waited around for over half an hour for someone else he was supposed to be meeting. He was obviously getting frustrated, and eventually walked up to us, said "She's not coming" and just walked off. We were left feeling somewhat bewildered, and I was more than a little annoyed. Walked back to old town, where I was staying, back to Prague cafe and finished watching my movie.

Sunday morning I ran around doing banking and buying stuff I need, etc. Had lunch at a cool little cafe called Hakuna Matata, which serves excellent Chinese and Western food. Went back to Prague cafe in the afternoon to relax and watch another dvd. In the evening I decided to go back there again for tea and ran into my friend Gemma. After Hunter rang me last week and said Gemma was coming to Lijiang and could I come, I had been looking forward to seeing her, but after Hunter's performance the night before, I still had no way of contacting her as he was my point of contact, and not surprisingly, I hadn't heard from him anymore. I walked into the Prague and she was sitting at the table there having tea. We had a good catch-up and went for a bit of a walk later on and ate some watermelon.

Monday was frustrating. I walked all over New Town all morning looking for some recording stuff I wanted, and discovered that you can't buy it in Lijiang. Rang up the Dutch guy I met last week at Lugu lake and we had lunch at a little Italian restaurant run by a French chef. Had a fantastic salad; my first in months! After lunch he took me on the back of his motorbike to see Pencil mountain, which was very beautiful and has a large buddhist monastery and parklands and lake on top. It was a lovely warm day, and I was actually able to wear a t-shirt without any kind of jumper and jacket and feel warm! It was lovely sitting under a pagoda in the sun looking down on the lake and Lijiang in the distance. Got back to Lijiang in the late afternoon and went back to the Italian place for a pizza. It still wasn't particularly cold and I sat out on the balcony with my pizza and beer. Scott would have loved it.

Then I went inside and got chatting again to the French chef and his Aussie mate. When the restaurant closed we all went out to a new bar in town, and sat on swings suspended from beams across the ceiling and I had a few gin and tonics. Then the French chef took us back to his home. He is renting it in Old town (the nice part of Lijiang). It's a beautiful old Naxi home with a huge courtyard. Very open plan. I could live in a place like that. And the rent's much cheaper than Aus....

Got back to my motel at about 2.30am. The gate was locked, which I expected, and I had to bang on the door and wake up the owner to get in. They don't seem to mind. Fell in to bed for a few hours sleep before getting up at 6.30 am to shower, pack and go back to Lugu Lake. The Dutch guy was going with some friends up to Ninglang this morning, so they offered me a lift that far, which was cool.

I caught a taxi down to where I had agreed to meet him and we had a car accident. It was quite odd actually as the taxi had just stopped to let me out. It was still quiet at that time of the morning too. She had parked just behind a van that was parked at right angles to the road, on the footpath. I was just starting to open the door to get out when the minivan, which was about two metres away from us, began backing out, straight towards my door. I was thinking "this guy's not serious, we've been stopped right behind him for nearly a minute" but he was apparently backing out without making any attempt to use his side mirrors or do a head check. The woman taxi driver started yelling at him, I quickly put my feet back into the car and closed the door again and a second later he backed straight into our taxi. The taxi driver yelled at him. He put his car back into first and slowly accelerated forward, looked out the window and saw that the taxi only had a bit of a dint, and then he turned left and drove off without even an apology.

The friends we were to be travelling with turned out to be colleagues of his Naxi wife, who used to work in a Lijiang orphanage. They're all Westerners who work for this orphan homes organisation, and they were going to finalise an agreement to start up a new orphanage in Lijiang. It was quite bizarre sitting in a van with half a dozen Westerners who all speak fluent Chinese. Except for my Dutch friend. They were very friendly and we chatted most of the time, so I didn't get to make up much sleep.

They dropped me off near the bus station in Ninglang and I looked around for a bus to Lugu Lake, and a guy said his van was waiting. I went with him and found that they didn't have any other passengers yet, so I would have to wait till they found some more. Unfortunately, I couldn't see any already half full minivans so I had to sit it out and wait with them for an hour until the next bus came in from Lijiang with passengers going to the lake. Ended up travelling with some locals, an older guy dressed in khaki from the army surplus store and a young buddhist monk in his long maroon robes. We all snored away in the back seat for most of the trip. We had to stop on one of the narrow mountain roads to change a flat tire. Then we were back in the van until we had to stop again when the monk got car sick and had to throw up beside the road.

Finally got to Luoshui and I went straight to my motel room, got into bed and slept for a couple of hours. I've just had a late dinner and a coffee at the Husi Teahouse, and now I think I'll go back and catch some more sleep. Good night fellow travellers.