Here is my oppurtunity to actually evoke envy, rather than whatever else I was evoking in my earlier more unevenly happy entries. I am here, of my own decision (see below), in Dali, for the next month. I found a cozy, colorful bookshop/bar to live in for the low price of 30 kuai (4$?) plus an additional psychological tax born of the thin wall between my bed and a street of trumpeting 8 am buses.
The owner Zhang Yan is English fluent and doles out quite a bit of trust. Since it is more of a shop, than a guesthouse, I enter and leave through the glass doors in the front. She gave me the key and I am entrusted with locking up at night. Not that its biggie, but its a nice feeling to have someone's trust like that. So my room has a desk and she gave me some mugs with flowers in'em and that's just about all I need. Added to the niceites of having personal space is the frequent flow of travellers looking to watch a movie in the living room outside my room.
As of so far, I joined a nice English guy who was watching Apocylpto and smoking a modest amount of pot; and eventually we went drinking and conversing at some yonder party. He's here in Dali for several months studying Kung Fu in the temple nearby. In the temple nearby, apparently, completely run (amok?) by children monks. He had some other interesting stories about former jobs selling bootleg t-shirts at stock car races in Japan, hawking sunglasses in Sweden in the summertime, and some passionate ramblings about mushrooms growing out the 
brains of moths. And we both agreed that it was better to be on the roof of the party than
actually in it. Parties of the sort are frequent in this town of hippie/international hipster traveller types. And now being apart of the little household at the bookshop, I (and my new friends) are invited to future dinners and parties. There is even rumors (though playfully mocking in nature), of the "Rainbow People" trundling up from Thailand by foot to enlighten this tourist town with their wise hippie ways. And we're all staying tuned for that..
