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Welcome to the LEAF-go-VSO website, our Yunnan (and China) travel and culture resource centre.

Based on our experiences of living and working here in Simao (Yunnan Province) since August 2005, we try to keep you informed on what it's like living as a foreign family in the most interesting and diverse of China's Provinces! This is also a portal to Lesley's work as a VSO volunteer teacher trainer.

For our latest news daily updates on LEAF life in China check out the LEAFhousedaily Homepage and Blog.

December 2009: This year we've produced a glossy colour 2010 calendar for sale (all profits to FISHfund). It's on the subject of Simao's fast-disappearing Old Town (see below). Let us know if you're interested in buying any- we have a large number to shift.

Simao Old Town Calendar (A4, colour, 13pp, 20 RMB or 3.00 GBP) Printed in Kunming

"We were flying into the hub of south-east Asia. The Yunnan tablelands had foundered exhausted into jungled valleys, where the curves of rivers still left shining terraces. Soon we passed over the grotesque blood-vessel of the Red River, flowing south-east toward Hanoi before spilling into the Gulf of Tonkin. The frontiers of Burma, Laos and Vietnam were converging ahead of us. We landed near the town of Simao, ringed by forest."
Colin Thubron heads into southern Yunnan (Behind the Wall, 1987)

Recently Updated Pages (and others of special interest)

Which Page?	When?	With What?
Orienteering	28/04/2009	A page with details of the newly convened Simao Teachers' College Orienteering Club - and some explanation (for students) about the sport.
Rice	11/04/2009	Updates to the Rice page following Freda and Edie's rice-planting experience up at Da Zhai. Lots of new photos.
Bamboo	10/04/2009	A bit of cultural information - find out about the role bamboo plays in the lives of the Yunnan people.
Deqin	25/03/2009	More photos of this Tibetan area of NW Yunnan: mountains; temples and a guest house with a great view! The last page in our Winter Holiday 2009 collection.
Monasteries	16/03/2009	Ganden Sumtseling and Dhondrup Ling Monasteries in NW Yunnan, and the gruesome World of Hell in the Tibetan Wheel of Life explained...
Cang Shan	06/03/2009	The saga of Ali's attempts to climb Ma Long Feng, a compelling mountain summit in the Cang Shan range above Dali.
Site Map	25/03/2009	Updated and improved page to aid navigation around the 160+ web pages which we've somehow managed to create in the four years we've been living in Simao!

Links to other sites

LEAFhouse Daily
Here is a link to our Weebly homepage (see below) and blog. Click for regular updates on our day-to-day life here in China.

Paul Hider
Hilarious blog-tales from one of our friends, an ex-VSO volunteer now working in a private English language school in Kunming.
Leaving the countryside, however, hasn't left him without tales to make you chuckle.

SHR Long Distance
This is a link to Ali's Scottish Long Distance Hill Running Records
pages on the Scottish Hillrunners website.

Hit Counter hits since 1st December 2006

Contact Details and Postal Address

You can email us at leafgovso
at tiscalidot
codotuk

Or write to us using the address below - the Mandarin (Chinese) version will be quicker and more reliable as it doesn't have to await translation in a rural outpost. If you don't see any Chinese script below you may have to enable your computer to display Chinese (PRC) language font [Control Panel_Regional and Language Options].

PR CHINA 665000, 中国665000 , 云南, 普洱市,宁洱大道275号,思茅师专, 外教: Lesley Tidmarsh

Simao Teachers’ College, 275 Ning'er Dadao, Pu'er City, Yunnan 665000, P.R. CHINA

Photographs: Unless otherwise stated, all photographs on this site are © LEAF