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By the time we got to Kunming it was dark. Rick, the manager of the apartment in which we were staying, drove us to our new accomodation. The car journey gave us our first taste of modern China - skyscrapers, building developments and hundreds of neon signs. The city looked incredibly futuristic. Gone were the tuktuks and motorbikes of Cambodia and Vietnam. Replacing them were nice cars and electric mopeds that made little more than a quiet hum. We had to take the long way round to the apartment block due to the construction of a new city wide subway system however after half an hour we had arrived. We were staying in a gated complex of about 10, 30-storey tower blocks situated by one of the city's main roads. It was a nice apartment and it made us feel like we were actually living in the city. Looking out from the balcony of our 22nd floor studio, the view was as Charlene described, cityish. That evening we went to the nearby Pizza Hut for a "Western", and got supplies from the nearby 3-storey Carrefour supermarket. We realised that evening that Kunming would be tough. We weren't in a hotel or hostel, so we had nobody to help us. Kunming isn't touristy so nobody speaks English. Pizza Hut was the only restaurant we could find with any English words or pictures on the menu. Thank god they did more than just pizza!
The next 3 days in Kunming were a struggle. We had planned on going to the nearby "Kingdom of the Little People" (a nearby midget themepark) but we had no idea how to get there. We followed the information on the internet about how to get bus tickets from the bus station only to find that the bus station no longer existed. Kunming is being developed at such a rate that a tourist guide written today would be useless in a month. We spent the rest of our time in Kunming either wandering around looking a bit lost, looking around the ultra posh Gingko shopping mall (full of top designer brands but always nobody shopping), or in the safety of our apartment. We hoped the next 6 weeks would not be like this.
We contacted Rick for advice on how to get to Dali and he sent us an e-mail with instructions in English and Chinese (to show to drivers and people at the new bus station). We got our bus with very little trouble as at the bus station a person on the help desk spoke English and got our tickets for us. About 4 hours later we were in our new hostel at the Old Town of Dali.
Old Town Dali is the exact opposite of Kunming. There are no skyscrappers. No big shopping malls. No new developments. Dali has been preserved and looks like the sort of town you see in historical Chinese films. The town is near to a chain of mountains that are nearly always partially covered in a faint mist, so the view down the old Chinese streets with the mountain background looked very mystical. It was much easier than Kunming - most people seemed to speak a bit of English and nearly all of the restaurants have English menus. We spent our first few days in Dali exploring the town (each day finding new bits), looking in all the shops and eating at the many cafes and restaurants. Our favourite cafe was called 'Sweet Tooth' and they had a fantastic selection of homemade cakes and biscuits. It was one of several deaf owned and run businesses in Dali. I'm not sure why there are so many deaf people in Dali, but there is certainly a good community for them. We also enjoyed going to 'Cafe de Jack' where they served lots of different types of food. The last time we went to a Jack's Cafe was in Cusco - I wonder if they're related?
There are two main things to go and see in Dali: the Three Pagodas and the Cang Mountain walk. Both these were within 15 minutes walk from Dali town centre. We visited the Pagodas first.
You could see one pagoda easily from the town however when we got closer the other two smaller pagodas came into view. It was a major tourist attraction for the Chinese and there were bus loads of people in the car park on organised tours. It was quite expensive to get through the gate to see the pagodas up close and we were a bit unsure whether or not to bother, however I'm so glad we did. When you go through the gate you come to a beautifully landscaped area of gardens, lakes, flowers and trees. We walked up the steps and saw the three pagodas up close however the doors were sealed so nobody could go in. We continued to explore the gardens and quickly walked along the path and up some stairs to a temple (we walked quickly because there were hundreds of huge spiderwebs everywhere - hideous!). The temple was quite impressive and contained a big buddha statue. We walked through the temple and saw behind it were more steps leading upto another temple. This temple was a bit more impressive and had more statues inside. We walked through the temple and behind were more steps leading up to, yes you guessed it, another temple. This happened probably 8 more times until we reached the biggest temple high up the hill which contained many massive statues of a buddha and other deities. Outside the temple were hundreds of Chinese people burning big incense sticks and praying. It was an amazing sight. Still behind there were more steps that led up to a Buddhist training academy and higher still, a tower where you could see all the way back down the hill. I don't know why the site is just called 'The Three Pagodas' since there is so much more to see.
We did the mountain walk the day after visiting the pagodas. To get up the mountain you need to use the chair lift. I didn't enjoy the chairlift. I don't like heights, we were going up for about 20 minutes and it was raining. When we reached the top we weren't too sure where to go however we saw some Chinese people and followed them. The first thing we came to was an old Buddhist temple. It felt very authentic, probably because it was. We then started our 12km walk on a very nicely paved path, through the clouds and around the mountains. For the whole 12 km there was barely any incline or decline and it was a very easy walk. Parts of it reminded me of day three of the Inca trail through the cloud forest. It was very pretty. We saw waterfalls and interesting rock formations (one looked just like a face). There were very few other people on the walk and it was very peaceful. At the end of the walk there is a cable car to take you down. There were loads of tourists crowded around the terminal however I don't think they did the walk. It seemed like people went up the cable car, looked at the view, then went back down.
We left Dali having really enjoyed our time there and headed off by bus to Lijiang. It was supposed to be a luxury bus but it was pretty terrible. We paid extra for a bus with a toilet but found that the toilet was actually locked (just like Vietnam). When we actually got to Lijiang we tried for ages to get a taxi but because it was raining all the taxis were full. I had to phone the hostel owner and he came along and helped . He was a Dutch guy who had lived in China for about ten years and spoke the language well. If he hadn't helped us we would have been there all night. Lijiang the city is just like any other Chinese city - big buildings and big developments. We actually stayed in a nearby town called Shuhe which is a bit like Dali only more pretty. No cars are allowed in the streets and the architecture is beautiful traditional Chinese. There are loads of nice shops and there is an area in the centre with a small lake surrounded by restaurants. At night its a hive of activity and there are musicians playing at every bar and restaurant. I thought it was the perfect place at first. The first night we went to a restaurant called Mamma Mia. It served a range of food and is run by an Italian guy. The food was fine which was lucky because it was the only decent restaurant that had an English menu. All the other restaurants had either restaurants in just Chinese or food that was a bit too strange - bullfrog, rotten meat, stomache and bacteria are not really my cup of tea. We were in Shuhe for 5 nights which on reflection was a bit too long. It would have been perfect if we spoke Chinese as Shuhe is a major Chinese tourist destination. There were very few other westerners there and we felt a bit out of our depth. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same restaurant most days and it felt a bit ridiculous after a while. The other big problem with Shuhe was the 'Lijiang song'. This old Chinese song which consisted of a few lines being repeated was pumped out from lots of shops all day, every day. The same song could be heard where ever we went. It drove us insane by the end.
We did one trip from Shuhe and that was to see the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Its where the Yangzte river is at it's narrowest and creates rapids. It is also in a gorge. There is some legend behind it about a tiger leaping over it. We had a private car take us to the gorge because we would have been lost in a big Chinese tour group. Because of this, the tour was quite expensive. We thought it would take about an hour and a half to get there however after an hour we stopped and our driver pointed us towards a gate from which we got an amazing view of the valley with trapped low lying clouds. It looked very mystical. After our 5 minute break we were driven another 2 hours over some of the worst roads ever. We were so pleased to actually arrive at the gorge. We were pointed in the direction of a path that was similar to the one from the walk in Dali. Again it was very quiet. It took about 45 minutes to reach the gorge. There were signs every few meters that carried a warning in bad English. Most signs said it was unsafe to stop and to move on quickly however some gave us advice on avoiding rockfalls, labelling rock falls, telling us to control children and also to not cross the barrier and try to jump in the river some 50 feet below. The walk took us through tunnels and was punctuated with noises from these small flying bug creatures that made a sound like a dentists drill. We hurried past them quickly. The gorge itself was okay. It was pretty and the water rushed by quickly. There was hardly anyone on our side of the gorge however on the other side we saw hundreds of Chinese tourists filing off coaches. We were lucky to avoid them. I was a bit disappointed with the gorge. It was 6 hours of bumpy driving for a very short and easy walk. We had seen better waterfalls, and rock formations and had done better walks on our trip already. It was nice to have some time out of Shuhe though.
As has happened before - plans change. Our original plan was to leave Lijiang and head north to Shangri-la. Fom there we were to head east to our next city, Chengdu. So much changes in China on a weekly basis that it's difficult to get up to date accurate information. After researching and asking people we found out that after a long bus journey to Shangri-la, it would be very difficult to get to Chengdu. There would be numerous police check points (because of Tibet) and we would have to get local buses from town to town. Considering we only knew 2 words in Chinese (hello and thank you), we thought that such a trip would be too difficult. We explored our options and luckily found 2 tickets left for a flight going from Dali to Chengdu. We also found out that there is a good train from Lijiang to Dali so we booked that as well. Lijiang to Dali would take an hour and a half, and the flight would take one hour ten minutes. It meant we had to spend 2 more nights back in Dali which was fine by us. The other option was to travel back to Kunming (7 hours) and then go from Kunming to Chengdu by train (20 hours). The price wouldn't have been that much cheaper either!
The train back to Dali was superb. We left from a new station only 2 days old and got our double decker train straight to Dali in the time stated. It was so much more civilised than the bus! Our time in Dali was planned around eating at our favourite restaurants and enjoying the ease of being in a place where most people spoke a bit of English. We had an early morning flight from Dali and were in our new hostel in Chengdu by 11am.
D
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