Shangri-la

I'm not really sure how I feel about Shangri-la, yes its a nice place, the old town is another very quaint town with lots of tourist shops, is very friendly and some of the scenery in the surrounding areas is amazing however, to be able to get to any of the "picturesque" places is incredibly difficult as there is a lack of public transport in to the scenic areas and the only ways to get there are to; hitch hike, taxi or pay extorsionate fees to a local tourist agency to show you were the places are to go to.

Anyway, when our van of intrepid backpackers arrived in Shangri-la we had no accomodation booked and decided to try the hostel that two of our van sharers had booked. Well when we got there, there was no owner, no electricity (the local power company were testing the electrcity and had been off for almost a day I believe) and not much else really. As it was late Gen and Richard went to the hostel next door as they were leaving early for Lhasa the next day so the rest of us decided to wait around for the owner. He eventually turned up, showed us around and it was actually quite a nice place though a little cold (all the buildings are made of wood and not insulated).
After spending a day mooching around the old and new town, including getting my visa extended in 40 minutes as opposed to 5 days or having to do a boarder run to Laos, Alex and I decided to book a Cultural Tour. This involved a visit to an old Monastery, visiting a Tibetan family, a four hour hike and a visit to some hot springs. Don't get me wrong, the scenery was lovely, the walk very nice (if tiring as Shangri-la is over 300m altitude) and the family lovely but when our tour guide asked us to "tip" the family we were surprised to say the least as we each had paid 380 yuan for the day and assumed that the price included a payment to the family for having us there, hmmm.

I didn't do much else in Shangri-la, Alex left the next day for Chengdu and I didn't feel too well so stayed on an extra day, slept and visited a couple of places in the old town. I didn't make it to the main temple as a couple of locals had told me that it was not worth it because it was too expensive (over 80 yuan) and they didn't like the "modernisation" of the temple. In fact I think that like a lot of other places in China Shangri-la will be transformed in the next few years to a tourist hub, so much so my original plans for going to Deqin were quashed when I found out that the road was "under construction" and it would take at least 12 hours to get there (if I was lucky) oh and apparently there is a lot of construction going on in Deqin that again the locals don't seem to be too keen on.

So what did I decide to do, head back to Dali of course!