My China/Thailand Trip (finally) with photos

[disneydreams]

Wolong-2 nights
Eh...I wasn't feeling too well when I woke up one day and it was the day we did our second community service project. In the morning, we had to help clean out the homes of the pandas as well as feeding them and do all this other stuff for the panda reserve. Then during lunch I got a ridiculously bad stomachache and had to stay at the hotel while everybody else went on a hike. the only exciting thing that happened was that one of our guides almost fell through this bridge made up of four relatively skinny tree trunks, but he caught himself with his arm. It was sorta high above these rapids...or from what I saw on my camcorder when I gave it to one of my friends to tape for me.

I fell asleep whilst listening to my "musical history of disneyland" (hah, go figure) on my ipod. I woke up shortly after someone came into my room , but was only, I'm guessing, the maid because she was in the bathroom...then she left. When the group came back, they were banging on the door frantically for me to open up. the key was in the room because it was needed for access to electricity, but the door was still unlocked when my roommate left the room. (It's was a two-star hotel). I woke up to the banging for a second and fell back asleep for a minute more. When I woke up....about....10 people surrounded my twin bed staring at me...and that scared the **** outta me. haha, but was feelin' the love there. Another friend brought me back this flower from the hike. And while some went on a second hike, the majority of the group stayed, and people just hung out in my room to chill and be weird. I continued sleeping through dinner and one of my teachers would only let me have a pathetic bowl of THIS for dinner. O_O. (haha, note how it's on top of my copy of Bob Thomas's Walt Disney: An American Original).

Prior to our departure from Wolong, if we wanted to, we could get our photos taken with a panda for 200 yuan...I initially didn't want to, but thought "eh what the hell, why not" and got my photo taken with this baby PANDA!!!. And here's a photo of one of our chaperones getting felt up on by the panda. haha, and afterwards, we went back to Chendu to visit a bird market...a brocade factory (where I got my new ipod case), and the Thached Cottage of famous Chinese poet, Du Fu. this and this were in the garden courtyard area of his cottage.

We said bye bye to Willie (biggest pimp ever, [you could tell that he was about to make the attempt to hit on every Chinese girl in the group], I hate him), and Becky and David. Don't ask me why I'm holding toilet paper. They forced me to. lol We then took a flight to Lijiang.


Lijiang-2 nights
It was kinda boring...at times...like when we visited the Dragon Pool Park (which was pretty actually...) and the Dongba Culture Center...but this was amusing to the group. And for dinner, we had pizza. Our group was divided into two separate rooms (taking up the entire restaurant), and in the room where I ate, we had a pizza competition. girls v. boys...we won...5 yuan...each. haha

Old Town was great. I stayed there as long as I could because the people there are just incredibly nice and modest. singing at night, and whatnot. Also, it's got lots of Tibetan goods.

After going up the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in gondolas (that reminded me of the Fantasyland Skyway gondolas..aww disneyland...) we went horseback-riding in the meadows. Some of us biked to this village, while the rest of the group went on a bus. Some locals...and this awesome old dude with the beard. We went to this farmer's house who used to hunt, and now his great grandson can hunt. one of my friends (I used to hate him) with the great grandson.

Took a flight to Kunming in the evening.


Kunming-1 night
we just visited the Major and Minor Stone Forest. Nothing fascinating, unless you like be surrounded by the color of slate grey...but locals often hang out there

then we flew...to Chiang Mai...