GZ!

back in guangzhou! 

cosmopolitan noisy brash in turn sophisticated and rude the city of great food! and modern hotel i.d. with heated toilet seats!

very glad to be back for another quickie weekend before we decamp home.

thoughts about tour guides

necessary to a smooth queue-free research-minimum trip, yes.

nightmare versions this trip:

• the one who didn't get the memo about relaxed and stuffed the day with additional activities
• the one who chain smoked (gah gah gah)
• the one who spoke loudly and you could imagine the spit
• and the one who wouldn't stop talking
• the one who brought you to tea shops and horse riding stops and tried to get you to the tribal dinner 'n' dance
• and the one who asked personal questions in order to build rapport (horrors)

i tell people it is important to not pay money to suffer.

my favorite guide was the second driver. quiet gentle thoughtful and punctual.

goodbye yunnan!

we've had a week-and-a-half of sweeping soul-enhancing vistas mushrooms to overflowing and enough lectures about silver and tribal culture and tibetan buddhism to make us psuedo-experts.

i am ready for bland canto cuisine cleaner bathrooms and all round cosmopolitan amenities now.

next-level toilet

on the way to shangri-la we take a loo break at a heavy vehicle check-in stop. the complex is vast and the loos are right in the back and quite ammoniacal from before you get to them.

i approach the bank of doors and push one open to find a woman crouched over the loo and back away in embarrassment. she is however most kind and tells me, go down this way. you'll find plenty of loos without doors there!

i do love visiting china but i confess i am not intrepid at all. also, i need doors.

meituan ♡

here you go! our third takeout of the night, delivered twenty minutes after placing the order.

coffee and basque cheesecakes from auntea jenny, in case you were wondering.

what did we have earlier today?

chicken and veggie and egg.

and another coffee and basque cheesecakes. as you can tell, we love the basque.

potatso national park

unreservedly sweepingly beautiful with rolling meadows (complete with yak turds) mirror lakes and ranges of mountains beyond mountains. 

yet i find myself quite unable to warm up to the place. the architecture is too ethnic the cuisine is too hearty meaty and the culture is too foreign.

high altitude medicine

i am given many tips to deal with the elevation of shangri-la. take prophylactic whiffs from the oxygen canister! 2 whiffs before sleep! walk slowly! drink more water! do not on any account bathe on your first day!!

some advice is perhaps more evidence-driven than others although it is all intensely generously and unsolicitedly well-meaning. the writers of the yellow book would have apoplexy if they knew what stuff is floating out there.

in full disclosure, i take a cold-ish 3-minute shower. because.