have endured another day of driving under the control of daddy.
when on the motorway the roads are rather good but when we venture too far off the beaten track the roads turn russia-esque making us feel we are on familiar territory but also fearing for the health of wilma and larry. swings and rounderbouts.

am in the second internet cafe since cross the big border which is far better than the connection i had in the hotel last night. the hotel was lovely on the surface but everything was superficial; for example, the sockets came out of the walls whenever i touched them. this was not good.
in teh morning when leaving the hotel tessie had her morning row with the hotel staff. tessie has these row with alarming frequency partly induced by her love of being able to speak chinese but mainly just being able to talk. the rows revolve around the staff being unable to washing things in the room, in this case the towel daddy had used to clean the pressure cooker which contained one week old meat.
this morning's hotel saga was dragged out longer than it normally is when daddy and tessie had an exciting arguement about who left daddy's phone in the hotel room. the day was saved when we went back to retrieve the phone from under the bed where the hotel staff had placed it. to reassure himself of its precence daddy took photographs with it all daddy. this cost us about 5 extra hours due to his lack on knowlegde on phone use.

the weather here has really started to heat up as we travel further south. although this does mean i have been able to stash away the thermals once more it also means that tessie's mosquito chat is back. i saw one mosquito today- aparantly she has seen hundereds.
i do feel that i should not be complaining, however, as i am reliably informed that we are not missing much in england weather-wise.
during our stay in china, so far we have not been able to dodge controvisy as daddy is forever making inappropriate comments of the like that cannot be repeated as we understand they are hot on censoring over here. we have also has mixed experinces with the people who stare at us where ever we seem to go. we are making plans to charge commision for all the extra buisness we bring into restaurants we eat in. must say we feel rather like the spice girls. exept more famous and cool.

now, im sure that everyone, reeve in particular, is wondering how daddy managed to damage poor larry once again. we had been subtlely lured into a false sense of security by the roads of china and therefore, when we woke up at the crack of dawn, and started to drive we did not see the first few extremely large potholes. we managed to smash into an impressive number especially as the day was rainy and overcast. when we stopped for breakfast high up in the mountains (along the scenic route we had been following) daddy thought it best to check how larry was getting along. it was then that we saw that larry's left wheel (as yet uneffected) was standing at 45 degrees outwards. me were forced to use yet another set of wheel barings and when changing them the wheel had been so badly abused that it practically fell off.
since teh incident we have tried to buy new barings and trailer wheels and have bought two new tyres for wilma.
when trying to get another of wilma's wheels changed we went to an incompetant garage and were forced to change the tyre ourselves or risk it exploding.

today the whole camp has gone on an economy drive. this has been much needed as we have only been able to camp once since being in china, have thus far been ripped off by hotels and had to pay expensive tolls on the roads.
today we spent over 20 pounds sterling on the roads and we pay at least some every. this has not been all bad though as without the good roads our progress would be painfully slow.
today we managed to eat extremely cheaply with breakfast costing roughly 50p for five people. rather proud of ourselves.
tonight we have managed to say in a couple of rooms above a street restaurant. particularly chuffed as the room even has a large balcony overlooking a hospital and costs 1.2 pounds sterlilng per person. impressive or what? however, we will not be able to have a shower as it costs extra. daddy has has reasoned that we would not have any water camping. great.

walked on an ancient city wall today with a bouncy castle at the bottom. hoping to drive on some more roads that other people would not advise tomorrow. all in the aid of good scenery.

we would just like to take the time to say that we were rather pleased with our last letter writting frenzy (i hope you appreciated the effort) and would like to say that there should be another soon as we got about 15 postcards each from queenie from our tour company. i hope you were not under the impression that we would buy postcards; having said that, we have picked up some pretty cool chairman mao gear even if i do say so myself.
we are also rather pleased that queenie is with us as it means that we have been able to unload lewis onto someone else for a change. his lessons are going swimmingly but this is somewhat over shaddowed by his love for his new book of puzzle adventures. lewis would like to say that he hopes all his friends are enjoying school back in london.

final thought:
hello to everyone but a specially grand tour camp welcome back to ling.
we are excited that she has been to syria but upset that she has managed to upstage us in the travelling stakes.
she should have picked the exciting side of town to say in. it would have made a great story.

am honestly still working on the photographs but my computer still has no battery as someone (daddy) burned out the intervor in the car and the search for an adaptor has so far proved futile.