China Day 4 Dali

Most of today was spent bike riding through Dali and a little fishing village on the lake. We stopped for lunch at a friend of our tour guides home - this was the best meal so far!!

Oh and Dali Beer is the best beer in China!

China Day 3 Dali

We arrived in Dali at 0430, 2h ahead of schedule. Thankfully we were able to go straight to our guest house and climb into bed for a couple of hours of warmth and rest.

Our guest house was situated a short walk from the old town walls. Our street was lined with little alcove shops which were predominantly woodworking shops... so as you can imagine... Jack was in heaven! Each shop appeared to be slightly different in its function. There were chair makers, then carvers, then polishers etc.

The old town was touristy but still quaint with cobbled streets lined with shops.

The afternoon was spent horseriding up into the mountains that surround Dali - the poor horses were exhausted by the time we reached the top! We climbed to an altitude of ~2300m to a temple. Interestingly on the way up the mountain we noticed lots of graves/ headstones. This is apparently a common practice because of Chinese fengshui - it is good fengshui to have a mountain to your back and to look out over water. (The other side of Dali is an extremely large [100km dam] inland lake). It was a great afternoon but our bottoms were very happy to be off the horses by the time the day was over.

China Day 2 Kunming

We looked around Kunming over the following day and tried our first street stall food - Meat skewers - which were meant to be beef but we were not convinced.... they tasted great though and we have lived to tell the story :-).

Our second night in China was spent on the infamous Chinese Sleeper trains in a 6 Berth Cabin (bunks 3 high on each wall). I think the poor chinese people who were in our cabin were wondering what they had done wrong to score 4 very large backpacks + 4 Day packs in the tiny cramped cabin.

China Day 1 Kunming

We arrived at our hotel in Kunming after a long but relatively pleasant journey to discover that we could not access our blog site or Facebook due to government restrictions on internet use.

We met our group for the next 22days which consisted of 7 Aussies and 2 Poms, plus our chinese Tour guide, so there was no chance of being homesick!

No Access In China

Unfortunately due to incredibly strict communication restrictions here in The Peoples Republic of China, we are unable to update our page until after the 22nd March. We are still contactable via email, however we cannot access Facebook at this time. Talk to you all in 3 weeks, have fun.

Computers in Furniture Design

For the last 7 days Jack has been at UTas in Launceston for a Computers in Furniture Design course.

It has been a good learning experience getting away from the usual hobby type woodwork.

Best of all once a project has been designed and drawn on a computer it is cut out on the $150,000 laser cutter which is an awesome machine.

It's very wet in Longreach

It has been raining for days, hopefully the removal truck will be able to get here and the roads to Brisbane will be open over the weekend.