I'm not sure if I told everyone that we were not only invited to Xiaoyu and Suling's wedding, but we were invited on their honeymoon too. Of course we had accepted. Even though the concept sounded a bit odd, I wasn't going to pass up a great opportunity to travel with people who spoke the language.

So we have now had 10 days of tooling around Yunnan province in the southwest of China at a pace that is much faster than we would have set for ourselves . (read: no time to write)

Travelling together was also a great idea because things are really busy the first week of October and hotels, planes, and trains are booked solid. X&S had wisely pre-booked our hotel and transport, something that we would not have known how to do on our own.

It's China's national holiday week, culminating in the Moon festival where the half year is marked with an evening family gathering. As the moon rises, we drink tea, eat fruit (round like the moon), and stuff ourselves with sweet, rich moon cakes, my latest favourite pastry.

All week we've seen moon cake sold on the street and in stores, finely packaged in magnificently decorated boxes. I must get one of these boxes but can't yet find a way to pack it in my bag. Dan however resists carting around an empty box for two months given that we only have one case an a backpack each.

I've learned a few things with X&S that is helping me keep perspective and show me that hassles are not solely the foreigner's experience . X&S were just as caught in these traps as we were.
1. We were dramatically overcharged at a tea room where the servers asked for 120Y for what should have been 20Y. Lesson learned: pre-establish the price before sitting down in a tearoom. (Note they are usually free)
2. A taxi driver wanted 20Y for driving us to the bus station although similar rides had cost 7Y on the meter. Lesson learned: ensure the meter is on unless you pre-establish a price.
3. Our toilet in the hotel room didn't flush. Lesson learned: check out the room before settling in, especially since we must pay a hefty deposit on rooms up front.

There is also the inevitable big production around small things. For example, in one hotel, our room card was deactivated the second day despite us being booked for two nights. And the same attendants decided to "rent" the umbrella rather than give it to us with a deposit, as is the practice in other hotels.

In these situations, Xiaoyu releases Suling on them . She is the toughest negotiator I've ever seen at work. The staff huddle around her. The tone of the debate escalates. More staff are called in. I take cover. The volume ratchets up.

Over the course of the week, Suling has left in her wake a trail of contrite, apologetic workers - the body count is half a dozen hotel workers, a taxi driver and two fruit vendors.

But these are not huge problems. Keeping the frustration level in balance is the key. We are actually experiencing far more helpful, pleasant service than poor service.

But the times when you are clearly being overcharged loom large in mind because we are so helpless without the language. And once X&S leave us, I fear we'll be like that dead meat we see hanging out to dry in butcher stores everywhere.

We've spent the last ten days between Guiyang, Kunming, Lijiang, and Zhongdian (renamed recently Shangri-la). We've taken in the usual tourist sites like the Stone Forest, the old Naxi town of Lijiang (both UNESCO world heritage sites), the dramatic Tiger Leaping Gorge, at the place where
three mountains in the range of 20,000 feet each meet, and the old Tibetan town of Zhongdian near the border of Tibet, Yunnan and Sishuan provinces.

Lijiang has provided wonderful respite from the polluted and crowded cities of Guiyang and Kunming . In the latter, it seemed I could chew the air. Dan and I both experienced sore throats.

But in Lijiang, the air is clear, although it's been raining on and off, and on most days, clouds have obscured our view of the mountains carved into the sky just behind our hotel.

The old town is delightful with its Naxi architecture, narrow streets, running canals, and rickety bridges or just planks of wood joining the two sides. On the main streets, the original structures are given over to souvenir shops and restaurants; the warren of backstreets lead to houses still occupied by families who offer homestays to tourists.

Some guide books complain about the overcommercialization of this place, but I don't see it as any different than what we've done in old Quebec City or Niagara-on-the-Lake. It's charming. We've also seen about a dozen western tourists here. Our first.

A little more than four hours from Lijiang by bus is Zhongdian, one of two places we planned to visit that gets us onto the Tibetan plateau without actually being in Tibet .

At about 9600 feet, the altitude is similar to that of Quito in the Ecuadorian Andes, and we experienced the usual headaches and sleepless nights. But it's not bad enough to stop us from enjoying the place, eating yogurt cheese and accepting, then throwing up, yak butter tea.

The highlight of Zhongdian is the Ganden Sumtseling monastery, a 16th century monastery destroyed during the cultural revolution but rebuilt from the rubble more recently.

It's a miniature version of the great monastery in Llasa, and there are about 400 resident monks. We lucked into arriving an hour before closing at 7 pm which allowed plenty of time to huff and puff ourselves up the immense stairways, take in the giant Buddha housed within one of the chambers, and have the place generally to ourselves.

Then at dusk, giant horns sounded from the rooftop, calling the monks in for the night. This was truly magical. Each long pull of the deep horn bounced off the surrounding mountains.

I've heard this horn in movies before like The Lost Horizon, but never in real life. It's a sound that makes you tremble deep inside, and surely it must speed the flight of a person's soul to heaven.

Around these mountains are dismembered body parts, scattered so that they may be consumed by vultures . They belonged to men and women who in life had "earned" the honour of such a "burial". Less worthy souls are put in a river; the worst are buried with the worms.

I have acquired a travel strategy here that I'm hoping will be useful to us. During a visit to a Tibetan home for Yak tea (read: "yuk" tea), a small Brit/Australian tour group pulled up in a minibus. I chatted up the English-speaking Chinese tour leader and left with his business card, a phone
number of his colleague who speaks English, and a reference for a translator in Chengdu, our next stop after leaving Yunnan province. This information makes me feel better. I know we're going to need help as we move on through China without X&S.

I'm back in Lijiang today, enjoying a few hours at a surprisingly clean internet cafe, though still very smoky. X&S have left for Shanghai and Dan and I intend to spend our last day here catching up on correspondence.

We fly out very late tonight for Chengdu, the capital of Sishuan province. Our hotel is pre-booked there, but since we will arrive at around midnight, I am very nervous. I expect the worst: a taxi driver who cannot find our hotel, a reservation that is somehow lost.

I'm a worrier. So I made Xiaoyu write out an entire script for me in Chinese characters that I can give to the driver. I would have avoided late night travel if possible but there is only one flight out of Lijiang to Chengdu. So that's what it is. The honeymoon is over.

by Carolann