It was bound to happen sooner or later. A really crappy day. We left Anshun this morning. The bus trip was only four and a half hours and we did pass through some wonderful terrain. We crossed over a colossal suspension bridge that ran straight into a tunnel which was cool, and just before reaching Xingyi we crossed the Malin gorge with huge waterfalls plunging to the depths below – a beautiful new suspension bridge high above the gorge in the background. Other than that we were both feeling tired and subsequently irritable.

Xingyi is another characterless boom city of concrete, chaos and dirt. Our plan was to spend 2 nights here and explore the gorge tomorrow but on the bus we changed our minds and decided to spend the morning in the gorge and get out of town by late afternoon rather than spending a second night. Unfortunately we found to our surprise that the buses to Kunming only run twice a day and not wanting to stay longer in this dive we bought a ticket for early tomorrow morning.

It took some walking around the bus station to find accommodation – another typical Chinese Businessman’s hotel complete with in room supplies including condoms, ladies underwear, Chinese knock-off little blue pills and sanitary wash that ‘kills all diseases’. By the time we had checked in it was too late to head for the gorge. So we have stopped here for nothing. If we try to look at it in a positive light we could say that we are just breaking up the long trip to Kunming, but honestly, almost two weeks of bad meals, isolated villages and dingy cities has left us longing for some western comforts. We hope Kunming will revive us. Should arrive there tomorrow afternoon and expect to stay for at least 5 nights while our visa extension is processed. It will give us time in a backpackers hostel with travel oriented hosts, Internet, some other honkies to chat to and some western food. We’ll catch the next beautiful gorge fully refueled – bring it on !!

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi