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Up early and went to breakfast in the other tower of the hotel. This consisted of going from the 5th floor down to the ground and then walking through the foyer to Tower A and catching the lift to the 20th floor, then going up a smal flight of stairs to another lift and going to the third floor in that! The view was great but the cloud and haze detracted from it. Breakfast was fairly ordinary. Dad and I only had toast as there was no scrambled eggs or anything else that I could find worth eating.
After brekkie we headed off to see the stone forest national park, a drive of approximately 1.5 hours. Dad snapped a pile of photos out of the window on the way (as usual)! On arrival we transferred to a little golf cart and went for a tour around the extremeties of the park. It certainly is an amazing place as you can see from the photos. There were many of the local Yi ethnic group dressed in their national costume, and there were some groups dancing and playing instruments. It was really very colourful. After the park we went to a nearby restaurant and had lunch. The local Dali beer proved to be very palatable (and cold)! The food was the usual lazy susan affair, but the difference in the style of the cuisine was noticeable with slightly different spices and cooking styles. There tends to be a slightly smoky flavour in some dishes which is really nice. By now we are very wary of the fish dish that inevitably accompanies every meal. The fish are of the fresh water kind and are usually some kind of cat fish or carp and have millions of bones! The flesh tends to be very tasteless too.
After lunch we drove to a village with a little embroidery place run by a local man and employing many of the women frrom the village. It was really lovely stuff but I didn't see anything in my price range worth buying. The village was built around a central kind of courtyard area (see photo) and this is where the community gather for all sorts of things and where the children (and adults) play games etc.
After that we drove back through the usual crazy traffic to the hotel. We had tiie for a brief respite before dad and I went for a walk to get supplies and money. This was a major exercise as we had no specifi directions on where to find an ATM other than to turn left out the door! In the end we found it, and a little convenience store and successfully crossed the street 8 times! You have no idea how much of an achivement that is! We bought some chocolates, batteries, 4 cans of beer, and 2 drumstick ice-creams for Y60 (around $10)!
We walked to dinner as a group, and this was the usual dodge the traffic on the sidewalk affair! Motorscooters and bikes continually driving along narrow walkways, which are rendered more difficult by all the building work inevitably going on around them! Dinner was very nice and we had the local speciality which was a noodle soup and very nice, but only a few managed to finish it (big Jim the kiwi and Terry the Yorkie of course)!
After that we went back to the hotel and stayed in our room. I did some blogging and photo uploads before bed around 10:30pm.
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Sue Wow the photos are just gorgeous. I love the gardens at the stone forest! The scenery looks really beautiful. The traffic sounds really crazy,especially on the walkway!