Kunming to Kaili

From Kunming we took the overnight train to Kaili in Guizhou province. I was a bit worried about the train as we could only get the very top bunks - there are 3 tiers of bunks in Chinese hard sleeper trains and the top bunk is very high up indeed.  Actually I needn't have worried at all, since it was so high up I couldn't really hear the constant comings and goings of my fellow passengers and I slept like a baby.

We arrived at Kaili around 11.30 in the morning and staggered out into an incredibly hot day. We took the bus to the CITS office, found it was closed for lunch and left our bags with a bemused man in another office and headed off for some noodles.

We passed verdant hills, set against a steely grey sky with paddy fields cut into hillsides being ploughed by water buffalo.

This province isn't very popular with foreign visitors and the guide book is fairly vague on the details, but we were keen to travel round and see some of the minority villages in the area, we just needed some basic info to get us started.

When we got back to the CITS office we met Bobby who turned out to be an absolute star. He helped us plot a route, told us when the markets were. Gave us tips on drinking rice wine (slowly, Miao people like to get you drunk) and how to find accomodation in some of the villages (don't, they'll invite you home) and what to do about food (show the man our mandarin note, before they kill a chicken). So the plan over the next few days is to head south west via various ethnic minority villages.

Our first stop the next day was Chong An a village north west of Kaili. The journey there was very interesting. We passed verdant hills, set against a steely grey sky with paddy fields cut into hillsides being ploughed by water buffalo. As we neared the village the bus was filling up with people carrying packages of goods for sale. We got off in the middle of a bustling market, being stared at and proceeded to wander about.

All sorts of things were for sale here's just a selection: wellingtons, rain ponchos, fabric, wool, noodles, rice, human teeth (don't know why), traditional medicines (which were being demonstrated), clothes, jewellery, hats, cakes and biscuits.

We went down a side street to the food part, where all manner of live and dead animals were for sale. We watched some ducks being bled to death slowly and once again were glad we didn't eat meat. It's really not very humane. There were fish in basins for sale and baskets of goslings, geese, ducks, chicks, rabbits, chickens, dogs and puppies. There was dog meat for sale too, but thankfully we didn't see any dogs being killed.

We spotted some century eggs (these are eggs coated with ash and salt and buried for 100 days), and eventually managed to buy two. Satisfied, we headed back to what could be called the main street and ran after a bus to jump on it.

The plan is to head for Xijiang next and see where we end up from there.