Off to Shangra-La

Up around 8:00am. Lisa thinks she's feeling better. We packed our bags, checked out, the guest house gave us a pendant thingy before leaving, a piece of cloth wrapped around something that smells. I think it's eucalyptus, Lisa thinks it's mint smell. We got a taxi to the bus station and got the next bus to Shangri-La.

It's a good day to be on the bus, it's overcast and raining and pretty cool.

Bus left at 9:30 and we climbed up into the mountains, twisting along a little highway as it meandered past deep valleys. The scenery was awesome and would have been more awesome if there were no clouds and we could've seen the peaks.

Got to Shangri-La around 2:00, still raining. Lisa ane me started to walk to the old city with our backpacks, but it soon became apparent that te bus station wasn't where the Lonely Planet said it was on their map. That, and the rain, we decided to hail a taxi, showed her the Chinese name, she called the place, then she knew where it was and off we went.

We checked into Kevin's Trekkers Guest House, 100RMB, about $8 CDN.

Walked into the old city, had an awesome lunch at Sean's Cafe, then walked some more, to a big square with a Buddhist temple on a hill behind it. It also had what could be the worlds biggest prayer wheel, which I spun 3 times. It must have been 40-50 feet high and 20 feet in diameter.

Back to guest house, I used the wi-fi to find out the NDP is now the official opposition in Canada. I didn't think i'd see the day...

Shangri-La is so much quieter than Lijiang. There's hardly any Chinese tourists and quite a number more foreigners. And most shops and restaurants we've been to so far have spoken english, quite a change from Lijiang. There's a lot of hiking here as well, so there's plenty of shops selling brand name (or fake brand name) hiking boots, Columbia and Mountain Hardwear clothing and such.

Now, a story about loss. I brought a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap and a plastic MEC soap holder. Unfortunately, I left them in the hostel in Singapore. So, in Malaysia I bought new shampoo and soap. Unfortunately, I left that at the guest house in Lijiang.  So today I headed out in search of new soap and shampoo. There's a supermarket just down the road, so I went in and found a bar od soap WITH a plastic container for 6 RMB (less than $1). Then to the shampoo section and found Jackie Chan shampoo! It was more expensive than other brands, but if it's good enough for Jackie, it's gotta be good enough for me.

Lisa and me went to Compass for supper. I had chicken kebabs and an Oreo milkshake and Lisa had a huge piece of chocolate cake and an Oreo milkshake.

We both went to bed about 8:00pm and reads.

It's very cool (temperature wise) in Shangri-La.