Yes I am a tourist and no I do not want to buy 50 wallets.

The reason why Ed and I were in Kaili was because it is used as a central point for several minority villiages of China including the Miao (pronounced Mee-ow; how cool is that?!) and the Dong (yup pronounced as in rhyming with bong—more on that later). We had found an English tour website, but they were out of town so they couldn’t really help us.

After talking to the hotel lady (the same one who found us) she suggested that we rent a private car for a couple of days. The driver would take us where ever we wanted to go for only 200rmb a day. Now just for reference sake, the English speaking tour company was providing the same service for 600+ a day or up to a 1,000rmb for a ‘tour with a tour guide’. Needless to say, we chose the 200rmb option!

The biggest bowl of soup we've ever tried to eat