So I left Chengdu with one additional traveller, and the three of us (Aaron, Simon, and myself) headed towards Kunming, the capital city of the Yunan Province, in south west China.

I have been repeatedly told about how Yunan is a completely chilled out environment, and it was one I would gladly welcome as I am loving this wind down session. Im a logical thinker, and in my mind, its time for a wind down. So what did Kunming have to offer? Nothing but trouble. We spent out days doing nothing but lounging, and spent out nights dancing our hearts out until the wee hours of chinese mornings. Sitting on the curbs of random streets at ungodly hours, completely out of our minds laughing at the most ridiculous stuff..that's what it's about. You laugh at everything and nothing. You try to talk each other in and out of trouble every second your together. Life is just so damn grand.

One day we rented bicycles to ride around the city...and riding a bicyle in china is one hell of a feat. First finding a bike that doesn't dig into your bum, or that actually as functional breaks is the first seemingly impossible feat. Once you have accomplished that, trying to bargain for a price and actually understand the owners, is part II of mission a la impossible. Once all is underway, deposits paid, bikes pumped up, then comes the real mess. Actually riding it down the street without accidenly oozing into the entanglment of wheels and handlbars. My god its so amazingly crazy but fun. Finding a place to park them is an even bigger feat, especially when everyone is just yelling at you in chinese about how you can't park "there". So what do you do? Well if it was up to Aaron, you'd accidently bump into a row of bikes and have the rest of your mates silently watch in horror as they all fall down like rusted akwardly bent dominoes.

We ended up at this park where lots of people spend their evenings relaxing away. There aren't very many westerners there, so those who noticed us, noticed us in a big way. At one point, we stopped to listen to a bunch of local musicians playing their music. Once they had noticed westerners were amongst them, they intended to play only songs we would recognize...which meant almost all christmas carols. So there we are, sitting there listening to christmas carols in september, and then we are ushered up to dance. Me and Aaron waltzed and danced our way within this ring purely for our own stupidity as well as their entertainment.

It became obvious that we were well overdue to return out bikes once we actually left the park, so we cycled around more and figured we'd just pay for the extra day the next morning.

Well that night ended as the sun came up, and we parked and locked our bikes up, and went off to sleep. And the next morning, our precious hunks of junks were stolen. There goes our hopes, our dreams, our aspirations, but most of all, our deposit. oh well. what can you do..you know?

One of the most random things that happened to us in Kunming occured when Aaron, Simon, Ed, and I were enjoying a dinner at this western cafe. A chinese woman approached us, and we instantly assumed it was to sell something. What she wanted, was for us to star in a television show that she needed western faces for. So she proceeded to ask each of us our age, and once we told her, she went silent for a moment. Apparently they wanted people over the age of 30 to play political diplomats. So she looked at each of us, and gave us the once over to see if we could pass for an older age. We tried to persuade her that without enough makeup, and little sleep, we could look as old as she wanted us to. She went around the table, tells Aaron he can do it, tells the other two they look too young, looks at me, and begins to analyze my soul. She looks into my eyes and says "You're eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul. Your eyes will give you away". The whole time I'm thinking "...uh..a)stop looking at me b) stop trying to steal my soul c) are you calling me a liar d) man i really wish I could get the waitress to bring me more water" Needless to say, Aaron was told he could come along.

We went out that night, the biggest dance/crazy session of our existence together. In fact, that night me and Simon spent about 2 hours on a scum infested sidewalk, trying to explain to aaron why we didn't need to barricade the doorway to the room, why we couldn't move the scaffolding accross the street, and why what he was eating was going to burn him inside out if he didn't stop. We spent those hours trying to talk him out of talking us into a plan to help get him out of this TV series filming. Aaron never made it that morning to the tv series. He won.

The three of us said goodbye to Kunming after it became obvious it was a trap for all sorts of trouble, and headed west into Dali. Dali is like a little mini disneyworld. It's a qaint quiet little town, with tons of heritage, but a lot of bursting activity. We decided to try our luck again with bicycles, and headed off to cycle around this ear-shaped lake in the town. The lake is huge, so we attempted to ride around half of it, which estimated to be about 100 km. With no advance planning, no sunblock, no food, no water, no toothbrushers or soap, nothing but the clothes on our backs, we headed off to catch a ferry to the other side of the lake and work our way from there. We had quite an adventure cycling through some really small villages, and bypassing the fast moving trucks, herded animals, and random obstacles in the road for two days. Since we didn't even start this until about in the afternoon, we didn't have too much daylight the first day and only cycled for about 3.5 hours.

You would have thought that we'd have gone to sleep early, but no, that's too intelligent. Instead awake until about 4am discussing Marxism and communist revolutions, and off to an unfit sleep until we woke up about 8 to start our second day. This time we knew we had an awful lot of cycling to do, to make up for our wasted time the previous day. The sun rose higher and higher into the sky and our skin became redder and hotter. By the time we made it back to Dali city, we were hot, sweaty, dirty, red, and hungry enough to eat the ass off a horse.

I'm still in Dali at the moment, just relaxing. Last night was a big night, as it was one of our travel mates last night with us. This involved another late night filled with dancing. It's all amazing, but strange when you notice the people discreetly take video footage and pictures of you, at least the ones who ask to pose with you and throw up their "v" peace signs have a bit of manners!

This place has some of the most chilled out cafe's I have ever seen in my life. I did notice a "help wanted" sign in one of them and yes the thought had seriously crossed my mind about staying here for a bit, but I've got plans at the moment...so yeah...

I've been in such movie wanting mode recently. I just bought this trio movie set called the Qatsi Trio. It's a set of movies which are all indivually named a specific phrase in native american Hopi language. One in particular is "Life out of Balance", and aims to provide a "simple but searing theme as the film unveiled a vision of an urban society moving at a frenetic pace, detached from the natural environment and overwhelmed by technology. In images at once stark and beautiful, assaulting and hypnotizing, the film worked as a kind of visual aperitif to conversations that could last for days or weeks." It might be one of the most amazing things I have ever purchased in my life, and can guarentee it will offer me a lot more than just the obvious. I have heard things about this hear and there, and even saw it referenced in the book "The Davinci Code" and when I finally saw it sitting in front of me, I had to buy it. BEST. SOUVENIERE. EVER!

allright...im out to go do some random stuff around this town...probably go watch some movies or something, love life a little bit more, and down the biggest hot chocolate on earth!!!