After leaving Emeishan totally sunburnt we went back to Chengdu intending to catch a bus the same evening to carry on to Kangding. Of course there were no buses so slightly frustrated we bought tickets for early the next morning and went back to same hostel we had been at before.. Mix hostel (by the way). Mat went to take a shower when suddenly, sitting at the bar minding my own business a woman came up to me and asked me whether I was going to be staying at the hostel the next day too.! After asking her why, I found out that Christiano Ronaldo (this name will say something to anyone who knows about soccer) was arriving in China in Chengdu and intended to make an Nike advertisement for which they needed foreigners (dont ask me why) to do some acting! WOW! the opportunities that present themselves to you when you think everything is going wrong hey! Nike was gonna sponsor me some clothing and the best soccer player in the world was going to get to meet me PLUS Id be on chinese TV! So of course I signed up. They were gonna pay me 150 yuan salary so I figured that'd cover my loss on the bus tickets we had already bought. Unfortunately Mat didnt get a spot on the nike crew. I went for a little interview with a slimy little guy who dissed my dirty shoes and said my hair should be tidier during the shoot.

Mat and I played Chess and Checker for the rest of the evening and I lost every single game. Everytime I thought the slimy little man I felt less like going to the shoot so by the time we were heading to bed my thoughts were something like this; "stupid slimy little man.. theres nothing wrong with my shoes! Plus I dont even like Ronaldo.. he should be swimmer coz he dives so much.. good for nothing pretty boy."

So the we got on the bus early next morning and I have no regrets. After eight hours of not so comfortable ride, bus driver hooting and shouting at us coz he never liked where we kept putting our feet, but beautiful scenery we arrived in the tiny town of Kangding which we say is the entrance to the "backdoor" route to Yunnan province because the couldnt wait to move on. We didnt have to search long for a place to stay.. we got a room for 3 euros each right next to the bus station but not before booking tickets to Litang at 6:30 in the morning.

Sitting in a bus for eight hours gets you restless right, so we male pigs got to pumping some iron.. or in this case, rucksacks. During our gym session Mat bumped over one of our water bottles which led to the cellphone getting wet which led to the dismantling of the cellphone and so on and so on until next morning we woke up at 7:00 realising that no one had reset the clock and our alarm had failed!

Since we really didnt want to stay any longer in Kangding we opted for the minibus.. and let me tell you this in advance.. dont take the minibus. Apparently the bus ride to Litang takes eight hours. If you take the minibus they promise six. It took us twelve! First they had to register their new bus, then they had to fill the bus up with passengers (in every town someone got off and someone got on) and then they even tried to do some marketing for a local brothel. All in all it was a bumpy ride, both literally and metaphorically, and upon arrival in Litang even the stiff neck and bruised head wouldve been alright if they hadnt tried to cheat us out of an extra 50 yuan each. They failed though, we only gave 12 yuan extra so theyd leave us alone.

So we had now stepped through the door and were at an altitude of 4014m in surely one of the top five highest cities in the world!