What part of 'no' do you not understand?

My friend and fellow teacher, Lois, has had her friend, Karen, visiting from the USA this week. On Thursday we went to a restaurant for Peking (or Beijing) Duck. It was really tasty and the meal was only slightly marred by the fact that the staff stood round the table waiting for us to finish and leave and also made Jared pay for a plate he accidentally broke!

On Friday Lois, Karen and I headed to the Stone Forest - a local tourist spot. We set off early and soon encountered the first hurdle - finding the bus station!! A woman touting for business tried several time to get us to take an expensive private car instead of the bus we were looking for. She was very slow to catch on (or possibly accept) the fact that we wanted to go the cheap way!

Anyway we were finally on the bus. Lonely Planet had warned us to avoid tourist buses which apparently stop at every pillar and post between Kunming and Shilin. We thought we had more or less managed this - after all, we were told that there would only be 2 stops on the way there. The first ended abruptly when our minibus returned from getting more fuel, but the second dragged on interminably and I thought there was going to be a mutiny against the driver!

However, we finally arrived and though it was a bit like Disneyland the rock formations were impressive and we managed to find some genuinely quiet corners of the park. We even helped out a Chinese couple who admitted to being lost!! I would like to go again as we didn't really have enough time to explore the place fully. Here's a link to a website about it: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/yunnan/kunming/stone_forest.htm

Hope you enjoy the photos. I'm off to bed, having done a 3 hour dance class this afternoon...