I spent  my leave backpacking through Yunnan, a southwestern province in China, travelling by train and bus and foot and bicycle.  Yunnan is very rural, very mountainous – and bigger than two Frances joined together. Despite this they are working hard on improving transport links, building huge railways and roads in tandem through the ancient paddy fields and up, round and through the mountains.

Although  more and more people have more and more expensive cars, most people still travel by bus – and these buses are not always motorised:

The other very noticeable thing was that when towns have paved old streets like we do in Woodbridge, only the very foolish or the incredibly pigheaded use a car at all, because its clearly so impractical.

There were plenty of Dragon mothers, but not one was in a car. Something to learn, maybe?

I was going to tell you some very interesting things about the trains – but unfortunately I’ve got to negotiate for more space on this blog for pictures so I can’t show any photoes of the lovely crowded trains on which we travelled in great comfort for up to 26 hours at a time, gorging on meals cooked on the spot over flaming burners for the thousands of travellers. From fresh ingredients. Oh, and when we were once 10 minutes late (over 26 hours) the embarrassment and apologies were immense..

On second thoughts, maybe you won’t want to hear about this. It might break your hearts.. and anyway, 山 高 皇 帝 远

Great: I got some more blog memory and so here’s the train pic..