Fun with a bun in the sun

Oh yes. The sun has come out in China and BOY is it hot. Loving it. You can see the snow-capped mountains from the towns. The baby one we climbed half-way up in Dali was higher than anything you can find in Europe with the highest mountain from the UK balanced on top of it, so I'm told. We wheezed our way up it in the sunshine, had some noodles (you can eat good food everywhere here) and then got a chair-lift down. It was class. Really peaceful with amazing views of a huge lake with a musak version of Take My Breath Away playing at regular intervals. Surreal and sublime.
We're now even further north in Yunnan in another UNESCO world-heritage town (Lijiang). It's lovely - a really old town (well, it was rebuilt after an earthquake early last century but they rebuilt it as it was) with windy cobbled streets and hump-backed bridges and peace and quiet and views of another huge snow-capped mountain. And we're staying at a hostel where the host is like your mam and she tries to feed you or give you tea every time you move. Cute.
Having a bit of a panic though as have not yet located a bun-shop for my daily fix. I keep mentioning these little beauties but they are soooo nice. They are steamed and are like fresh hot white bread filled with the sausage-meat from a good sausage roll (my mam's, for instance). Mmmmmmmm. You can normally get about 8 good ones for less than 20p. And now I've discovered another loveliness - the same sausage-meat encased in a ravioli made of noodle-pasta, steamed, and then devoured with a dip of dried chilli, chopped spring onions and soy sauce that you assemble yourself to your taste from the ingredients available on your table. Oooooooh, I love it. People who don't eat street food when they travel really are missing out. Mmmmmmmmm. Must learn how to make these things. Mmm, time for a mid-afternoon snack maybe?

What a girl will do for a steaming Chinese bun...

We are now back in China. I went from being too hot to sleep on Tuesday night to now being so cold again I can hardly speak! We have come north, and are near the mountains and I sit here in my thermals, my jeans, my hiking boots, my woolly hat and my waterproof. There has just been a huge thunder storm and this internet bar has no front door. Why, when for half the year the place is so cold do the restaurants and public places here have no doors? It is soooooo cold. And the hot water in our hotel only came on this afternoon.

Such a shame as we are really glad to be back in China - we just want it to heat up a bit. Being back with Chinese food is fab. Today we had snacks of steamed dumplings filled with sausage roll mixture and then we had a steamed cakey thing off a street vendor that was exactly like a treacle sponge - with hot treacle and everything!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Musn't worry about the calories.. I probably need them to survive in these sub-zero temperatures.

So, we didn't stay long in Laos. From Luang Prabang (which I adored) we headed to Vang Viang - feted as a backpacker heaven and home to the infamous tubing down the river where you hire an inflated tractor inner tube, float down the river on it and at various intervals get pulled into one of the several riverside bars for a Beer Lao. When we arrived Pete was still poorly so we hung around in one of the bars with "beds" in where you lay watching Friends all day. Then the next day the heavens opened. To be honest, we just weren't digging the place. It was full of kids straight out of uni and didn't really have any charm (although the scenery around it was beautiful). We had a pie in an English pub and decided to hot-foot it to Vientiane - what has to be the smallest, quietest capital city on the planet. It was so hot some nights I couldn't sleep. We met up with our Dutch friends Kim and Ewoud again before they headed across the river into Thailand. We ate pain au chocolat and steak-frites and then tried to decide whether to head to Vietnam, Thailand or straight back to China. If the Bangkok-Kunming flight had been cheaper, I would have gone with Pete's desire to see some more warmth in Thailand before heading back to China. If the railway between Hekou on the China-Vietnam border was back up and running we would have headed to Hanoi just beacause we could. But the cheapest and most bus-free option was to fly straight to Kunming and then get a bus up here to Dali, which is exactly what we did. No more baguettes here. We're back into steamed dumplings of joy, lots of hot jasmine tea and freezing our bums off waiting in vain for the shower to heat up in our hotel room.

Ah, but it's good to be back! Hmmm, wonder what's for dinner...

I've finally found something with a nose bigger than mine!

Aw, the last 2 days have been amazing. As we couldn't visit the gibbons with zip-lines in NW Laos, Pete promised me elephants and elephants are what I got. Yesterday we packed up our trunks and we headed off to Elephant XL Camp - a home in the Laos countryside near Luang Prabang for elephants that have been rescued from logging. The project supports the local community by providing income and English training to the guides and the elephants get to earn their keep by letting tourists ride them (for not very long at all each day, don't worry, they were happy elephants). I'd never touched an elephant and when they first plodded into camp I had tears in my eyes. They really are amazing. There were four lady elephants and one baby. First off we rode on a chair on the back - alternating between that and the elephant's neck when we got a bit bolder. When we got off we fed them bananas, which I found hilarious. They spy that you've got a bunch and then you see an inquisitive trunk coming your way on a exploring mission. The trunks somehow seem to be animals in their own right, they're so far away from the rest of the elephant's head. After many bananas had been consumed, the chairs came off and we rode them back to their forest home for the night (they only do 2 rides per day + the rides to and from the forest for people like us who'd signed up for the mahout (or elephant handler) experience). Being on the elephant's neck was scary - especially going down-hill! I thought I was going to fall off and be squished by a big foot! But I managed to stay on and manage the hike back to our camp - camp, pah, it was a luxury room in a big lodge and we had a four poster with mosquito net and a big verandah looking out over the river into the teak forest and everything.

It had been an exciting day so we had a siesta and then joined the other couple on the mahout experience for a lovely dinner by candlelight (as the lights were attracting too many moths so they turned them off for us). This morning we got up at the crack of dawn to hike back to where the elephants had stayed the night and we rode on their necks back to the camp. Obviously we weren't riding alone - each elephant has its own mahout and most of them will only cooperate with one mahout. All the commands are by voice - BAI! means Go!... KWA! means Go right! See, I'm fluent in elephant now (but would only be able to drive them round in circles, it seems). Back at camp we fed them some more and had some fun feeding the baby who didn't quite grasp that he should eat one banana before searching out another. He ended up not being able to carry all the bananas with his trunk but still kept asking for more. After the feed came the best bit. We rode the elephants into the river and helped the mahouts give them a wash! I was responsible for lovingly scrubbing the elephant's head. They loved it. After that we said goodbye as it was time for them to work. And for us to work too - we kayaked 5 hours to return to Luang Prabang, a lovely trip but I'm now aching everywhere and am looking forward to my dinner tonight. We're going for Lao food again. Probably have the spicy green papaya salad again. And the pork salad too. And maybe some more river moss - I prefer the fried to the boiled myself but they're both nice.

What a fantastic couple of days. It was such a cool experience, if anyone comes to Laos, which I highly recommend for a holiday, then this trip is a must. I feel so lucky to have washed an elephant!