Sick in icy Yunnan? Try a pint of whisky

Sometimes I think Hong Kong must be some kind of pest-hole. Do you know of any place where people get sick more frequently than here? If they don't get food poisoning on the day you're throwing a dinner party, it'll be flu or "the lurgy" 10 minutes before you're supposed to go out for a drink or, worse, to quiz night.

Maybe it's just me, but I think people give up too easily. What happened to the good old "take two Panadols and power through" spirit?

In such a society it's good to have friends like J. Although genuinely sick and suffering for more than two weeks, she never, for a moment, entertained any thoughts of cancelling our Christmas trip to northern Yunnan. Six thousand milli-grams of vitamin C per hour, ginger tea coming out of her ears and chewing Panadol like boiled sweets - plus a good assortment of thermal clothing - and she was ready to rock.

"Illness is all in the mind!" she assured me, as we embarked on the 29-hour train journey to our first and least freezing destination, Kunming.

I couldn't agree more. But two days later, walking through the Old City of an increasingly cold Dali, where a biting wind found its way into my earholes before I managed to dig out my woollen headband, I started wondering if that axiom was strictly true. While I was thinking about something completely different - food probably - a terrible needling pain started in my right ear and was worming its way into my throat. Oh no, not the mainland Christmas flu!