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Wednesday 17th September- day 27 Dali We arrive in Dali at 7am and take the local bus into the old town which takes a good 30min. Dali is nestled between the Cang Shan mountain range and Er Hai. The old town is still surrounded by the old Ming walls and it is characterised by cobbled lanes and old stone houses. We enter through the west gate and walk. Through the gardens and lanes. We find a market just off ‘foreigner street’ and get lost in the madness for a bit - there’s fresh fruit, veg, fish being gutted right in front of you and a frenzy of meet butchering going down in the middle on wooden tables. We get some fruit and walk through all the stalls until we reach south gate – from there we exit the old city and take a bus towards the san ta - the 3 pagodas. We walk from the drop off point which takes about 10 mins - we dont really know where we are going, but we just head towards them in the distance. The gold Pagodas look quite striking against the backdrop of the deep, blue, mountains. The pagodas are embellished with Buddhist relics and scriptures. As with everything in china, there’s an entrance fee into the park with various temples. We are content with just taking a few pictures so after that, we walk back to the old town and take the bus down to Er Hai Lake- 2ks east of the old town. Er Hai is a symbol of natural fecundity to the Bai people and is named after its shape. We get some street food on the way down which to the lake which is just chips but they are covered in spices and fresh chillies. We walk along the lake and see an old striping down to his trunks to go for a swim. A few people have stopped to watch him scramble in, flip-flops on his hands, and he begins to swim across. I’m dying to know where his clothes are, its not even warm today, me and Yas both have jackets on. After the lake we get some rice in a hostel and head back to the station as the buses dont run too late and we dont want to have to pay loads to get back to the station in a taxi. We kill some time walking round the city but there’s not much happening so we watch a few episodes of the wire before we board our overnight train to Kunming.
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