Hello. In Kunming again today, still. Went to the Bamboo temple a couple of Klicks to the NW today. It's a buddhist temple built in the 1700's and graced with over two hundred life-like sculptures depicting various gods and demons and so forth. Of course, they actually depict people, and the sculptor spent a lot of time in taverns and on the street, modelling common people, so that he could make them gods. The result is eerie, beautiful, crazy, and appearantly, dangerous, for the sculptor, upon finishing his works, was never heard from again.

I wish I could have taken pictures, though. Rooms filled with these life-like creatures, gazing down on you and laughing, or battling serpents, or slyly glancing sidelong at one another. They erupt from the walls on giant waves riding carp, crab, and serpents. They sit on the rafters and peer from the corners while stroking their long white beards.

Tomorrow I'm off to Vietnam. Which is good since my visa will expire in 2 days. Ima gonna skip Sapa and head straight for Hanoi.

I miss everyone so much. I almost want to just get on a plane here and fly home. Seeing the sights and travelling is fun and exciting, but at night, when I walk the streets alone, the concrete is just concrete, and the sky is just the sky. Experience is unfulfilled, and in a sense unborn until shared.

On that note, I want to make sure that all y'all know how much I enjoy and look forward to reading your comments, thoughtfully forwarded by Erin, and how great it is to know that somebody out there is reading this stuff, and so supporting me even still.

Oh, and one more thing. I can't see or edit my posts, once written, so all my poor spellings and unfinished thoughts are laid bare in these posts, and they are usually legion, since I usually write at night, when I'm well tired. So.

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Met on the road:

Michael, 19. A student about to start studies in London, taking a "gap year". He is completing 6 months of travel including some weeks spent doing volunteer work in Borneo (where he ate porrige every day and slept in a tree-suspended hammock while building a sixth playground in a tiny village)and in Chile (where he headed a project to build a boardwalk to protect some field or another).