A Monk, a Chunk, and a Skunk (Shangri La)

Shangri La is burr burr cold at night! BUT Stuart and I were in the lap of luxury with a heated mattress, ahhh yea. (By lap of luxury, I am semi joking... the rest of our room was concrete)

We met up with our friends in the morning and all of them wanted to go out to Chinese breakfast. No thanks!

Stu and I found this little place called Compass Cafe and I had (for the first time since being here) a cappuccino, and it was fairly decent! I saw this beautiful yak leather journal that I really wanted to buy, but I thought we could just come back for it later (it was about 20 bucks so I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the dough).

Speaking of Yaks: everything is Yak Yak Yak in Shangri La. We ate some yak our first night in Shangri La and it was quite good! There's Yak yogurt, too. We were introduced to that by a guy who we saw in Xi'an, Kunming, AND Shangri La (crazy, right?!).
Yak yogurt is AWESOME! It comes in a glass bottle and you sip it through a straw. Mmm Mmm good. (Dad, I think you'd love it).

The morning was spent wandering around and exploring the trying-to-be-Lijiang Shangri La. It's pretty there, and becoming touristy, but hasn't quite reached that point yet. I got a bracelet that's pretty sweet... that's pretty much it.

We went out for lunch with our friends and I had the greatest salad I've ever seen. Loads of boccaccini, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, and parmasen. What more could a girl want?!
And it had the cutest baby kitten we've ever seen!

In the afternoon Stuart and I walked in the wrong direction for some while and realized we were dreadfully lost (We were trying to find our way to a massive monestary). After heading back to the hostel and asking for directions we were on our way.

On our way (it was a good hours walk) there was a yak standing in the street (and boy are they big!) Stuart told me to go stand by it and he would take a picture.. so I did and then this man started yelling at us! Apparently it was 10 RMB to take a picture with the yak... how were we to know!?

After a long walk and somehow avoiding the 55 RMB per person fee, we arrived at the monestary. Eeee... I don't like looking at Buddah and watching people bow down. Yikes. We didn't stay very long.
(the walk up through the country side was quite nice, though)

We went back to the restaurant we had gone to the night before for some appies while we waited for our friends to sort out their Tibet trip with the travel agency. We tried some Tibetan Baba's (which were dreadful!)

We came back and waited until quarter after nine and finally they arrived home and we went out for a very relaxed dinner (all 7 of us were very tired), came home, and went to sleep! :)

Back to Mama's House! (Day 1 back in Lijiang)

2 of our friends (Calvin and Steph) had to head back to Lijiang to pick up their luggage, and Stu and I had to head back to get a train to Kunming so we all took an express train together which was quite nice.

For some reason it was the worst bus ride EVER and seemed to drag on and on (probably because I was trying not to think about how bad I had to use the ladies room for the past 5 hours) I had to hold it in because the toilets are unbearable and the most unlady like thing on the planet. EWW!!!! ew ew ew I can't stand them. I will never get used to that.

When we got back we had some fruit salad and bid farewell to Steph and Calvin. After that we wandered around the town and had 'family dinner' with mama and friends.

In the evening we walked with some guy we met all around old town and new town looking for a decent super market and talking about travels.

We got back after dark, read, and slept like babies.

Time to Relax (Day 2 back in Lijiang)

What a great day! In the morning, caught up on some e-mailing and had a nice breakfast (MMM PEANUT BUTTER! I havent had that in ages, and oh how I missed it!)

We spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon on the rooftop of a french cafe, me writing letters, and Stuart reading to me about China. It was a beautiful, perfect sunny day to lounge around.

After that we went to a lovely restaurant and had some Naxi bread, cucumber salad, and chicken soup and played crib.

The weather started to get bad so we spent the late afternoon at the Prauge Cafe watching One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest (the first thing we've really watched since we got here) It's so fun to watch TV when you never do it!

We got back to Mama's just in time to have 'family dinner' and me a nice family who we talked to for a while. We wandered the streets for a couple more hours (and I bought some AWESOME hippi pants), hopped in a minibus with a couple and headed for the train station. The couple we met was very nice and heading to the same hostel as us. (Back to The Hump).

Once situated, we braced ourselves for a long night.