To all of my loyal readers (all five or six of you), have any of you ever heard of Jiuzhaigou before? If you have, raise your hand (Daisy, put your hand down). Until about a week ago, I'd never heard of this place before; in the Lonely Planet Travel Guide, it gets less than two pages of coverage (which is nothing), and on almost all travel websites I've looked at, there's no mention of it anywhere. Well, if any of you ever plan to take a trip to China, you MUST put it on your list of destinations. The Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve is absolutely beautiful....really, I'm in jaw-dropping awe of just how gorgeous it is here. I'm still feeling pretty under the weather, so I only saw maybe 1/4 of the park, but it was well worth hauling my ass out of bed at 6am and the outrageous ticket price. My photos will never do it justice, you have to come see it for yourself.
I'm leaving Jiuzhaigou tomorrow morning for a 13 hour bus ride back to Chengdu, and *hopefully* I'll be leaving Chengdu the next morning for the 20 hour bus ride to Lijiang (Yunnan). It's not ideal to spend 33/48 hours in a bus... but time is short, and sights are plenty. My plan for Yunnan is to spend a few days in Lijiang, head up to Shangri-La for a couple of nights (I have an important appointment there that I can't miss!), go down to Dali for a bit, and then finish off with a quick trip to the Yuanyang Rice Terraces. It seems fairly ambitious for two weeks, but I'm gonna do my best to make it work. This is all contingent on my ability to actually get the appropriate tickets for the buses/trains/planes that will be necessary to get around.
On a final note, I hear that Mr Harper is planning on unveiling a big cabinet shuffle next week....the Globe and Mail website is super slow here, so I'm having difficulty getting a lot of news on Canadian politics.....if any of you are feeling super generous, could you perhaps update me when it happens??
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