After Langmusi, we stayed in a village homestay - a little house which was cashing in on tourist trade. The family moved out and stayed in the living room, and let us lot have their bedrooms. It was a nice insight into real life in China...

The house was quite a large Hutong style courtyard house. The rooms we had were upstairs, and were just a basic room. The toilet was out in the corn field and really did consist of just a couple of planks over a hole!

Dinner was a traditional Tibetan noodle and mutton dish - which was very spicy.. it was nice.. Mickey (our leader), myself and Adrian all elected to sleep outside under the stars... It was very pretty - with the occasioanl shooting star.. Maddy and Sam spent a few hours sharing our blankets to chat and star gaze. Strange seeing a different set of stars - It was a strange feeling - I knew the stars would be different - but at the same time - it made me feel a long way from home.

Next morning we headed off for Jiujhougou, a long 9+hr bus ride, only made more interesting by being held up by bandits, or highway men maybe...
We were driving down this regular road, when some guy stood in the road - right in our path.. a compatriart stood on the other side of the road, to prevent us going around him.

The 'boss man' then was replaced by the grease monkey - in front of the bus, about 1cm from the widscreen... whilst the boss man came to the window to bargain with Mr Xu our driver. Mr Xu was the man - he just laughed at them and offered them each a cigarette. A little local banter and 2 fags later - we were on our way again - could have been so much worse - but Mr Xu is our hero :-)

Later along this mammouth bus ride - Mr Xu again risks life and limb for us, this time by draining some petrol from another bus - to fill up ours - as we were going to run out.. not before getting himself covered from head to foot in petrol ! Poor guy... and oh how much he loves to smoke !

After a bit of evapouration time, we set off again, and eventually arrived in Jiujaigou.

This is basically a Las Vegas in China.. we come out of rural grasslands into Neon lights and hotels built to look like Castles - I took an instant dislike to the place, and it only went down hill from their. Our hotel has sold our rooms - because we were so late... so we had to check-in to a 'by the hour' place which was okay in the room I stayed in, but other people reported the bathroom had shit all over the walls.. and some of the girls got harrassed by pervy Chinese men.

Early the next day we checked out - and Mickey sorted out our original hotel - which was much better.

Jiuzhaigou is basically a tourist resort feeding of a natural resource - some pretty water!.. They call it a national park - but that is like DisneyLand doing the same. Basically the whole place is a mechanism to remove money from Chinese tourists - and rip off as many westeners as possible.

This place was a mistake to make it onto the itinerary.. fairly soon our group had re-named the place JiuzhaiDONTgou.
We had 3 days here - way too much.. by the last night - Mickey sensed our dismay and started pilling on the Great Wall red wine to cheer people up.. soon a chinese disco and Karaoke thing was on the cards - a good night... managed to give me something positive to write about this place.

The chinese can't dance - but they are very funny to watch !!.. .I think they love laughing at our dancing too - as soon as we sat down they started dragging us up again - nightmare :-)

Next we were off to the serene tibetan town of Songpan - a welcome change...