I suppose you are all wondering what happened to us. Well, plenty, but nothing bad. Except that for a while China decided I couldn't post to a blog. Now I guess we can. We are in Beijing and leave tomorrow on the trans-Mongolian train. I'm extremely happy to be leaving this country of what, a billion or so people, and going to one with only 2 million. Apparently I have that phobia of too many people. Here in China we spent a far amount of time in Yunnan they have an amazing gorge called Tiger Leaping Gorge that we hiked for two days before heading to Shangri La. In the gorge we stayed at a guest house up the hill which had an amazing view of the mountains, plus probably the best breakfast I've had in China, though Colin's looked better. Oh, your thinking, they didn't go to ShangriLa because it doesn't exist. Well it does, it's other name is Zhongdian, it's close to Tibet and has a Tibetan vibe, plus a foreigner vibe of "oh I wish I could go to Tibet, but it's hard to do, and expensive." We weren't into it the first day when we went to see a lake that's actually just a plain, but by the second day we were just looking at hills and going to climb up them. Ah but we were far from Beijing and had to get a move on so it was off to Chengdu. Chengdu is famous for Pandas who are very cute, but rather lazy and as a sign in the research center said "we are national treasures and we hate noise." We also met up with a friend of ours working in the peacecore who has become hilariously skeptical of the who China deal. Hard not to agree, like I said, I'm ready to go.

I still haven't said anything about Laos though it's been my favorite place so far, when you see us, you might get us talking about it by mentioning:
Teaching monks English by candlelight
boat rides down the Mekong
seeing dinner alive
jumping leaches and hiking though lots of red mud.
If you are sad that we haven't done a better job here, don't worry, I'm keeping a lovely journal/scrapbook/sketchbook that I'd me more than happy to share.