cargo ship from hell So here's the moral of the story: do NOT take a cargo ship from Guan Lei, China, to Chiang Saean, Thailand, unless you really, really hate yourself and wish to do yourself and your mental and physical health tremendous harm.

I don't even know where to begin; I don't have time to tell the whole story. Let's just say that they SLAUGHTERED A PIG in the kitchen of the boat last night. Yes, let's just leave it at that.

In the meantime: next stop, Australia!!! I arrive in Sydney in a few days--bought my ticket out of BKK. Thailand is awesome. That is all. More soon, when hundreds of small fire ants aren't crawling up from under the keyboard into my shirtsleeves.  ¶ 2:34 AM

  lovely and amazing I'm having a fantastic time in Kunming, in the southern part of the country. It's just a beautiful place, and I'm staying at what I firmly believe is the greatest hostel in the world (also, somehow, the cheapest!) There is a very, very weird club a few minutes away that drums up business by giving free drinks to foreigners--I'm so not making this up!--and there is just a wonderful family-like thing going on with all the backpackers here. I'm tending to a little travel administrivia while I'm here--buying a few tickets and grabbing a few visas--and will head out to Southeast Asia soon, but this place is really a great break after freezing, frantic, aggressive, smoggy Beijing, so I don't see anything wrong with hanging out and lazing around on the roof deck smelling the flowers and drinking bad beer for a few more days.

I think a friend here has a card-adapter thing that I can borrow to finally upload a few photos, so I'll try to do that later today. For now, the roof deck is calling my name...my farmer's tan is really getting a little out of control, though.  ¶ 7:37 PM