Arriving in Kunming felt pretty weird. Mainly because everything seemed full on and foreign. Emerging from the bus station into the busy main street where no one spoke English and every sign was rendered unintelligable took a few minutes to get used to.

After settling in i got a really good feeling from this city. Fon flew over from Thailand to travel around China with me. So that was great and made such a difference.

Over 3 weeks we cut up diagonally from Kunmiing in the South-West to Hohhot in the North-East. The highlight in the South had to be Songpan. This large village / small town was where we joined a cool group of people and headed out into the Chinese hills on horse back.

We went native out here. That meant using wooden saddles, having very strong but very small horses and even wearing some traditional heavy coats that the locals wear. It looked like a huge dressing gown but weighed a ton. But as the temperature ventured below zero at our high altitude i was very happy to be wearing it.

Thankfully my trusty steed was lively and well up for it (even with me on its back). So while most people tagged along behind the horse in front i took mine "off road" with the occasional burst of speed.

Poor Fon had never been on a horse before and here she was in the Wilds of China being taken for a ride with her rather spirited horse (he was a bit of a biter). But she got right into it. Fair play!

Our first meal turned out to be sliced tomatoes and hard bread. Not quite what was promissed. Our "guides" spoke no English and we all had sore arses from our saddles. But i loved it!!! The rest of the group were a great mix and it turned out to be one of my favourite parts of our trip.

Now is maybe a good time to appologise to any internet perverts who are only reading this because of the title. This actually refers to what i believe to be the national sport of China. No not Kung-fu - but spitting.

Througout China you can't go five minutes (that's being generous) without some man, woman or child hacking up a big greenie and spitting it out. On the train, bus, street - anywhere there's a square inch of floor space, they're at it. No shame, that's just the way it is. Disgusting.

Anyway, our next interesting stop was Shaolin Si. This Mountain is the fabled home of Kung-fu. The Kung-fu show we saw was very impressive, but that aside the venerable martial artist monks were in short supply. Like, we never saw any! Still it was worth coming here for the cable car up the mountain. Fon had never been on one and she looked very scared!!

In Beijing we had our first encounter with daylight robbery, litterally!! In China no one ever seems to queue. They simply barge their way to the front. A thousand times worse than the grannies at the Post Office on pension day. Believe me, it gets brutal. Anyway, while fighting our way onto a bus there were three women with babies in their arms, all shoving as well as the next person. Fon looks down and one of these wily mothers had her hand in Fon's handbag. Luckily nothing had been removed before she pulled it out of the mother's clutches.

As our bus pulled away these women were still at the stop waiting for the next bus to come along so that they might indulge their theivery. Watch out for that one.

Before Beijing we had our second highlight. This was in a place called Chengdu where we paid a visit to the Panda breeding and research centre. Here they had 44-ish Pandas, giant ones and some lovely smaller red ones. they looked well looked after (which seems rare in China after one "Zoo" we saw) and it was very cool to see these dudes enjoying their breakfast and generally mucking around. Well reccommended.

So after 3 weeks we saw a lot but too few truely cool things to make me want to come back. After meeting the, generally, grumpy Chinese and their poor sanitary habbits i was glad to head up into Mongolia.

Here it's back out into the wild grasslands and deserts for some camping and horse/camel riding. That's more like it. Sadly Fon has gone back to Thailand so it's back to being on my lonesome. But i leave tomorrow for a 17 day adventure with a really nice group so things look promissing. So i shall let you all know how that goes. Catch you later