hey, just thought i'd do a quick update cuz i might not be able to access the internet for a few days. so you last left me in bangkok, where i had a few days to kill by myself. i did all the rest of the touristy stuff, including a tour of the king's mansion from the turn of the century, where i learned the reason that people all over the city were wearing these yellow collared shirts that made me think they were all the staff of some large golf club. well heidi had already told me that they were to honor the king, but i found out that each day in thailand has a color, and since this king was born on a monday, yellow is his color. so every monday, half the country wears these ugly yellow shirts. crazy, huh? also, the king had a set of porcelain from china that was white, but turned black if there was poison in his food. um, from there i flew to kunming, yunnan, where i met up with a friend of mine who is living there. also, it was at this point in the trip that i met up with dandan, who flew in from beijing with another coworker of ours. he took us to his aunt and uncle's house, where we were barraged for an hour with advice about travelling in yunnan. then, it was really weird. we thought they were taking us out for a nice yunnanese dinner. they took us to a local place that served over-the-bridge noodles, a kunming specialty. but then, they paid for us and just left without saying goodbye! they didn't even eat with us! maybe its a southern chinese thing.
we decided that kunming didn't have much to tempt us, and if we wanted to do all of the cool things shushu and ayi had told us about, we should hit the road. so today, we took an all-day bus to xishuangbanna, in the very south of yunnan. travelling was a pain, but it was so exciting to get down here, its amazingly beautiful and i think we're going to get to see some cool chinese minority towns. it's going to be a pretty whirlwind trip, as we realized that to fit everything in we're not going to have much downtime, but i think it'll be worth it. i'll sleep when i'm in nyc.