Email end Day 17.

 Hi everyone,

This is coming to you from Dali in the Province of Yunnan, in China. After convincing the staff at the hotel in Tenchong that I did not steal two perfectly ordinary white guest towels we were finally allowed to depart - about 20 mins late. 

The trip from Tengchong  to Pupiao was spectacular - the scenery was out of this world, I don't have the time to write down all the superlatives, but believe me it was fantastic. The grandness of the mountains, the patchwork fields that covered them,  everything simple took my breath away. Consequently I was feeling quite breathless when we encountered the result of a road accident. Traffic was backed up like you wouldn't believe; no-one could move in either direction so we decided to have lunch and hope things began to move.

We had a lovely lunch at a local restaurant with the by now mandatory 9 bottles of beer followed by birthday cake (Judith's 59th) but lunch didn't take long enough. We had a further two hours to wait during which Jeff and I whipped Ross and Ross off the table playing 500. I had the most fabulous hand but before we could start playing we were called to the bus. Prematurely I might add, we sat around in the bus for a further half hour before we could even get into the stream of traffic. 

Slowly, slowly we  drove up and down mountains, passing large, heavy transports in the most unlikely places -  my heart was in my mouth on many occassions but I decided to put my faith in the driver, relax and enjoy the trip. We passed not only over and around mountains but through them as well. There were ten tunnels of various lengths the longest being three kilometers - the work that has happened and is happening is amazing, particularly when you consider most of it seems to be done using China's most numerous resource, the people.

We were flying along the relatively new expressway making up time when the driver pulled the bus off the road, stopped and got out. We had a flat tyre. That's no big deal, I hear you say! That's so, if you have the tools for the occassion. The nuts were on so tightly, it three men (the driver called for reinforcements) two hours to get one tyre off and the spare on. Needless to say we were rather tired when we finally arrived - an 8 hour trip took over 12 hours. This tour was advertised as an adventure and it certainly has been. I'll fill you in on some of the others when I get home.

Today has been relatively quiet - a trip to a market, a tie-dying place, the Three Pagodas, lunch (worse one) and a walk through the Old Town. Tonight we're having dinner in the Old Town and I'm not going to have Chinese!!!!

Hope everyone is fine and enjoying themselves as much as I am.

Love Helen 

This is a Chinese computer so don't blame me if I've made any mistakes.