China Day 9: Lijiang

James and I awoke the next morning -- bright and early, as usual -- to catch the first bus back to Lijiang. We took a break at our favorite pit stop and got some more strawberries and seasoned potato kabobs. When we arrived in Lijiang we were instantly approached by a tall, thin woman of about 50 who showed us to a nice little hotel hidden in the maze of streets, where we threw down our bags for the night.

I took some time to explore Lijiang -- a serious maze of Naxi architecture and cobbled streets which will inevitably lead you to get lost. It took me 30 minutes just to find the hotel, and the whole town is probably less than a square mile in area. A UNESCO World Heritage site (for its architecture), Lijiang is FULL of Chinese tourists. I mean HORDES AND HORDES of Chinese tourists. I saw less than 10 white people the entire time I was there. Granted it was a holiday and many Chinese had a few days off, I don't doubt that on a typical day it's much less crowded.

The massive tour groups with their neon hats and the guide holding a flag takes away quite a bit of the charm of an old town, but Lijiang grows on you after a while. It certainly hasn't got the uniqueness of Dali or the serenity of Shangri-La, but it does have a quaint personality with lots of ancient influence. There are still tons of stores selling song bowls, prayer wheels, and typical Tibetan antiques and jewelery, but also several tea shops, artistry shops (and even a gallery or two), and, the most interesting, are several shops which carve personalized stamps -- square ones to use with red ink, as an artist's signature on a brush painting.

We stayed in Lijiang for one evening, and packed up the next morning to jump on a bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge...

China Day 8: Shangri-La

We woke up before sunrise and ate a nice breakfast cooked by our amazing host. We gave her some money in thanks and got right on our way. Though my legs were all itchy from the blanket I slept on the night before, I was very warm and comfortable in my bed, even though our host put out vests as pillows. Or jumpers, as those crazy Welsh call them.

It takes us a while to get to the final stop on the trek where we can hitch a ride back to DeQin. The trail wasn't very well marked and we ended up going the wrong way and had to climb through quite a bit of bushes, getting all scratched up before someone saw us from across the bend and told us how to get out. It took us maybe two hours to get to the last stop, even though we could see our final destination most of the time we were hiking. So we found someone to give us a ride back into town where we caught a bus back to Shangri-La. We didn't return in time to catch a bus back to Lijiang like we had hoped, but I'm quite glad. Shangri-La is a great place, and the lack of tourists makes it all the better. We found the Old Town, full of shops selling prayer wheels, song bowls, shawls, coyote hats, jewelery, and a multitude of handicrafts. We ate dinner at The Compass and talked with the owner, a Singaporean. The Old Town has got a square in the middle, a place for the locals to congregate for their nightly dance. Prayer flags draped from rooftops line the perimeter of square, and in the back of the town lay the largest prayer wheel in the world.

China Day 7: The Epic 14-Hour Trek

Up at the crack of dawn to get as far as we can today. Since we are off to a very late start we consider getting to the mountain pass, maybe even Shang YuBeng, the village in the valley, and then turning around and making it back to Shangri-La before the day is out. We can't decide so we figure we'll wait until we get there and see how we are doing on time.

The hike to the mountain pass is tough. It takes us maybe five hours to go from 2650 meters to 3800 meters, and it's a tiring climb. I think I got tired more from being out of shape than from the altitude. I can't imagine what this trek would have been like if I'd have brought my entire 35-lb backpack with me. I'd have died!

Our map indicates it takes four hours from the hot springs to the mountain pass. We take it pretty slow to enjoy the scenery, take a few photos, and stop for tea along the way. Somewhere I heard someone use the word cha for tea, so I ask the woman for cha and hope that it means green tea. Nope. Two cups of yak butter tea coming right up, and two cups of yak butter tea secretly poured out by two Westerners. And by the way, there were at least two if not three guest houses between the hot springs and the mountain pass. Either the people in XiDang just really wanted us to stay there or the Chinese girl mistranslated our question.

A couple of hours pass and we start seeing snow. It's early May so much of it has just begun to melt. I want to make a snowman but all the snow is brown.

We finally make it to the mountain pass and are welcomed by hordes of prayer flags hung from bushes and trees. We walk a little further and rhododendrons are everywhere now too. We're pretty tired and stop at a small shop for a cup of tea (green) for about 20 minutes. There's a great view of the mountains through the trees so we take a few photos as well.

Onwards to Shang YuBeng, about one hour away from where we stopped. We stop for a lunch of noodles, vegetables, and green tea. This isn't Tibet, but you sure wouldn't ever know it. The houses are all in the same Tibetan style, prayer flags are hung over bridges and fly from rooftops, and there is a line of prayer wheels. The people look a bit different than the Chinese -- their skin is darker and more golden, and their faces not quite as round but with more defined features. And they are all so welcoming.

After about an hours rest we decide to keep moving. It's nearly 1:00 by now and our map indicates about six hours to the next guesthouse in NiNong Village. We wander through the fields of Xia YuBeng, the village we ate lunch at, and the next few hours of our trek are along the Salween river, running wild with freshly melted snow from the moutaintops. This part of the trek is difficult -- it's steep and rather than a dirt path we are walking through rocks. It's not good on my legs and the fact that I have been wearing sandals, both flip flops and my Tevas, for the past month has irritated my knee. The trek is a bit tricky but we enjoy it and list of our Top Fives of just about everything before making it to the bridge across the river and stopping for a rest. We have been walking for about nine hours now and both James and I are pretty tired.

Rest for a while and take some photos on the bridge. Onwards we go, and the trek really gets scary. Suddenly we are walking along the edge of a cliff. To my left, a stream about one foot wide and a cliff wall going straight up, often hanging over the river and butting into the trail. To my right, only a few inches between where I place my feet and where the cliff ends, the 200 meter plummet into the Salween below begins. This is the Trail of Death. Nowhere in my travels but here did I ever fear for my life. One false step and I literally would have fallen to my death and would have been washed away by the Salween River. The trail was never more than a foot wide, and at some point there was no trail to speak of at all. A log was placed over a waterfall where the stream fell over the cliff; James took his chances and successfully maintained his balance for about six feet across waterfall. I, on the otherhand, despite the balanced I have developed from years of ballet training, decided that I wasn't going to take such chances with my life and I took of my socks and walked in the stream. And it was cold. As ice. Literally. I felt ice chunks in that stream. But cold feet is certainly better than being dead, yes?

We continued on the Trail of Death for about two hours, myself stopping and crouching down everytime the wind blew so hard it could have knocked me off. We rounded the mountain and were now walking along the Lang Cang River, part of the Mighty Mekong. We come to a village that offers grapes, but we see another less than an hour's walk away so we keep on truckin.

We arrive at the village and they've got no place for us to stay. They tell us to try the next one, about two hours away, so we keep on walking. It's dusk and we calculate our chances of getting stranded on the mountainside overnight. If we can't find a bed soon, it's not looking so good.

Finally, we come across a small village -- it looks as though only one or two families live here. Nobody is around so we wander through the buildings until we find someone. Once we do, they don't speak english (duh), so we play charades for a bit, putting our hands together and resting our heads on them to ask for a bed, and putting our hands towards our mouths with our fingers together to ask for food. They welcome us inside.

I had always wanted to do a homestay, particularly in Laos or Vietnam, but never had the time. Several backpackers had told me they were very touristed and set up more like an exhibit than anything. Most backpackers ate with the family, watched them work for a while, played with the children, and slept in a separate shelter built specifically for tourists. There were often mulitple tourists in the same homestay, sometimes up to 6 or 7. It didn't seem very personal and certainly not very real. But here James and I were, staying with a family, with no other backpackers for miles around. It was a real live homestay.

In the building we stayed in was only husband and wife, plus a cute little puppy and a few chickens that kept wandering into the huge kitchen. The floor was concrete and the ceilings were low. The woman asked us to wash our feet in another room before eating dinner -- I don't think this is customary, I think she was just being kind and assumed our feet were tired from all the walking. They then brought an extra bench from the kitchen into their bedroom so we could watch TV. Oh yea, and the woman was wearing a Volcom hat. Also, I was outside and tried to ask the man where the bathroom was. I had wandered around for a bit trying to find something but had no luck. The man just kinda pointed away from their house, towards the mountain...

China Day 6.5: Feilai Temple to XiDang Hotsprings

As we drive along a bumpy, unkempt road, over and around piles of rubble left over from the occasional landslide we are GIVEN an amazing view of Meili Snow Mountain. The Chinese girl driving with us asks our driver to stop for a few minutes to enjoy the view and to take some photos. We have arrived at Feilai Temple.


Kawa Karpo is one of the eight holiest mountains in Tibetan Buddhism, and each year many Tibetans circumambulate the mountain; that is, they make a holy pilgrimmage. (Circumambulation has certain rules to follow -- sometimes this includes walking only in the clockwise direction, sometimes this means crawling on one's stomach.) Because Tibetan believe the mountain is home to a god, no one has ever summited it.

We have maybe an hour or so until we reach the first village on the trek, XiDang. After paying the entrance fee to the park, part of UNESCO's Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area where the Mekong, Salween, and Yangtze Rivers all run parallel, and after the Chinese guy in the minibus with us hides under all of our bags in the backseat so he doesn't have to pay the 60 yuan entrance fee, we finally arive at the hot springs. We ask the locals, with the help of the Chinese girl who has now become our translator, if there is anywhere to stay before we get to Shang YuBeng, the village in the valley. They tell us no, and since it's already 4:00 we have no time to make it there before dark. We throw our bags into a room and have no choice but to crash there for the night.

After a meal of noodles, vegetables, and some not-so-delicious egg soup, we think it'd be fun to take a hike to the hot springs and chill out for a while. I had been expecting a couple of pools somewhere nearby, but when the Chinese girl showed us where they were, I must admit that I was disappointed. Really disappointed. The hot springs were sort of like a bathtub -- just a concrete basin with a faucet that tapped into the hot water in the ground. The basins were housed in what looked like a bathroom. Getting your feet wet is really the extent of what you could do here, no swimming in a warm refreshing pool.

There wasn't much to do but lounge and practice our Tai Chi for a while. It was getting pretty dark and I decided I should probably use the outhouse before I couldn't see anything at all and risked stepping down the narrow slit in the ground where you did your business. As I walked across the dirt courtyard, flashlight in hand, I suddenly heard a loud grunt and stopped dead in my tracks. What. The Hell. Was That. Shine my flashlight around and find a big black pig lurking by the trees. I brush it off and keep walking but the pig keeps on grunting, and with every step I take towards the outhouse she takes one step towards me. If I make a run for it she'll probably start running after me, plus it's getting dark and me being clumsy as I am would probably trip over something. I try talking to her and telling her that I don't want to eat her, that I don't really like pork and would rather eat chicken, though not chicken from China because of what I read on CNN, and that I just really needed to use the bathroom before it got pitch dark. She didn't really understand but I managed to inch my way to the outhouse. The same story on the way back.

So James and I sat up for a while looking at the stars. Never have I seen the starts twinkle so brightly as I did that night on Kawa Karpo. Maybe because there wasn't a light for miles and miles around, maybe because there weren't any factories polluting the air within a hundred mile radius at least, or maybe being 2650 meters closer to the stars just makes them that much brighter. Whatever it was, I loved it. It felt like Shangri-La.

China Day 6.0: Shangri-La to DeQin

Up and at 'em early in the morning and pack all our things into James' backpack and my daypack, leaving the rest at the hotel until we return the next day. Grab a good seat on the bus and pull out our books and iPods to entertain us for the ride. I'm reading The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga by Deepak Chopra and James has got Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. The bus ride is a bus ride for a while, but a beautiful bus ride. I think I've said this before but sometimes bus rides can be my favorite part of traveling, simply for the scenery. And this scenery is absolutely gorgeous. There are hills and mountains everywhere and a mix of earthy browns and greens.

We make a 30 minute pit stop and hang our legs off a ledge where a woman is tending to a small garden below while we take in the scenery in front of us. We meet some Canadians and talk for a bit. Wander around the area and find some goats along the side of the road, or maybe yak, I can't remember. James befriends one of them.

We hop back on the bus and are in for quite a ride. The road twists and turns and the mountains get higher and higher, the snow more abundant. Pretty soon we're high enough where there's a considerable amount of snow below us as well. Quite a few times I fear for my life as the bus rides so closely to the edge of the road, and it feels as if any second we will plummet into the valley below. Taking this on a motorbike would be dangerous, but truly amazing.

A full six hours after leaving Shangri-La we arrive at the bus stop in DeQin. It is now 1:00 and we had expected to be at the first village on our trek by now. Things aren't looking good as this trek will now take us three days or more rather than the two we had planned.

We look for a taxi or minibus to take us to the village, another two hours from DeQin. We meet a German couple on the bus who we offer a taxi share with, but they have decided to stay in DeQin and do a few other treks. We luck out once again and find a teeny Chinese couple on holiday who are also looking to go to Kawa Karpo, and the girl speaks pretty good English. She finds us a minibus that can leave around 2:00 for a decent price of 120 yuan, split between the four of us. (James and I planned to spend 140 yuan between two.) We jump in and are off to the mountains.

China Day 5: Dali to Shangri-La

Wake up in the morning for an 8:00 Tai Chi lesson on the North Gate. The juxtaposition of James against our instructor is hilarious; James is a guy of about 6" from Wales and our instructor barely makes 5". It would have made a great photo, too bad I was in my "I take too many pictures and feel too much like a tourist" phase. Our lesson lasted a full two hours and we learned a sequence of movements, stopping for many and learning how they are used for self-defense. The movements themselves are very fluid and slow moving, but they are to be done with resistance to strengthen and train the muscles in the proper way to move when defending oneself. In the actual defense situation, the moves are to be executed with force, of course.

10:00 rolls around and the UK boys show up for their Kung Fu lesson. James and I head back to the hostel to pick up our backpacks and make a quick run to the bus stop which leaves at 11:00 I think. Hop on the bus and enjoy a lengthy bus ride to Shangri-La, passing the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the way and myself thinking if I really want to be missing out on such a great thing.

We arrive in Shangri-La and have absolutely no idea where we are or what we are doing. We have no clue where Kawa Karpo is, how far it takes us to get there, or even what bus to take. We don't even know where the center of Shangri-La is, or where the travelers hang out, or what there is to do there. After about five minutes all I know is that there are a ton of little green cars that only have three wheels.

A man who seems very nice and sincere says he's got a place for us to stay, and seeing as we really don't know where else to go, or how to ask anyone since nobody speaks English, we follow him to a nice little hotel about 30 seconds from the bus station. Our room has a great view. We take a walk around the city to find a place to use the internet, and all the while I'm wondering if we are actually in the right place. I thought Shangri-La was supposed to be this magical place described in James Hilton's novel The Lost Horizon? I thought it was considered the "Entrance to Tibet?" This doesn't seem magical at all, and I don't see any sign of Tibet anywhere except for shop signs that are in Tibetan (and very poorly translated English). It's just a big city, albeit one with pool tables in every other shop and people playing on the sidewalks.

As we walk we discuss renting a motorbike and just hitting the road to Kawa Karpo on our own. Sounds like tons of fun, but we don't know where we are going, plus there's no motorbike rental anywhere. We find a place that looks promising for internet, though. Its got rows and rows of fancy computers with huge flatscreen monitors and shiny red tabletops that are all sparkly. There are headsets at every computer. A man walks up to us and pours James a beer and gives me a glass of water. And then I realize... this is a gaming place. Oh boy. But internet is internet and for once we have nice computers with a fast connection. So we gather all the information we can on the trek, which isn't much, and then head back to the hotel and make a stop at the bus staion to get tickets for the first bus in the morning. We luck out and meet a Chinese woman who speaks pretty good English who just did the trek and tells us how to get there. We buy two bus tickets to DeQin, which we are told is about four hours away, and Kawa Karpo is another two on top of that. We expect to get started on our trek by 1:00 and make it halfway before dark, then finish up the following day and make it back to Lijiang that night and have quite a bit of time at the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Back to the hotel and watch our favorite Scottish weathergirl on CCTV before hitting the lights for the night.

China Day 4: Bumming Around Dali

Get a good night's sleep before Day 4 begins. Not much happens today and I spend the majority of the morning hunting down "Jimmy," a local guy that takes people into the mountains for a one- to three-day yoga and trekking retreat, exactly what I had been looking for. I never found Jimmy, unfortunately. Today I had hoped to hike up one of the western mountains but somehow never got to it; I'm not really sure why because I really don't remember hardly anything happening today. I wandered around town some more and did some window-shopping, although there aren't really any windows, so I just looked and didn't buy anything. Well, I did buy this little pouch that will come in handy, and it seemed the perfect souvenir from a town such as Dali. I also saw some coins and thought of buying one for myself and one for James, because of course we would need them before we parted ways, but I knew that he would see the same thing and buy them, and what do we need two coins for?

So Day 4 was pretty uneventful and I later told James that I was planning to head to Lijiang tomorrow. I was ready for the Tiger Leaping Gorge. James had picked up a brochure with a map of the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail and also a Kawa Karpo trail map, which I had never heard of before but which sounded interesting. We'd have to head straight to Shangri-La to get there which is about twice as far as Lijiang, I think eight hours or so. I was apprehensive of it for quite a while because I knew going there would mean my days at the Tiger Leaping Gorge would be cut short -- that is if everything at Kawa Karpo went according to schedule. But I gave in and we bought tickets to Shangri-La for about $9 or $10.

That night we decided to have a wild night out for our last in Dali, or about as wild as it can get in Dali, which isn't really wild at all. We went to the Bad Monkey again and met some guys from the UK who I think were studying Chinese somewhere, I can't remember exactly. After a few Tsingtaos at the Bad Monkey we headed down the street to the Sun Island Cafe, a real nice bar/restaurant/guest house that we had dinner at the night before. There was a group of people jamming on a bunch of drums and we hoped to find a similar vibe there tonight. Unfortunately the vibe had been there earlier, but the police came because of the noise and broke it up. We stayed for a drink anyways. A few minutes later this Asian Hippie guy walks in, or stumbles rather, from the back of the building. He's got real long hair and is wearing jeans and a plain white tee. He's mumbling all this stuff in Mandarin that nobody can understand. He finds a drum on the floor and picks it up, trying to clip it to his pants but having an infintely difficult time doing so. It takes him quite a while to finally get it attached and when he does he trys to bang on it but doesn't really produce any good sound, just lots of clatter and more mumbling which has now developed into a sort of singing. He stumbles out onto the street and even though the door is closed we can still hear him banging on the drum and singing, until it gets quiet for a while, and then suddenly he stumbles in the door and everything happens all over again. Great people in Dali.

China Itinerary

So where exactly are all these places? Well thanks to Google Maps it's all nicely laid out in this custom-made map below. Just click on the markers to tell you what is where. On May 3rd I crossed from Vietnam into the city of Hekou and immediately jumped on a bus to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. From there I spent three days in Dali, and if you zoom in close enough you can see the long skinny ear-shaped (if you've got such a creative mind) Erhai Lake. James and I took off to Shangri-La in the northwestern corner, which is labeled Zhongdian on the map. (The name was changed thanks to author James Hilton, but more on than later.) From Zhongdian we took a six-hour bus ride to the town of DeQin where we immediately left for Kawa Karpo, the westernmost marker on the border between Yunnan and Tibet. Two nights in the mountains and on our way to Lijiang, but not without spending a night in Shangri-La first. Lijiang is sort of in the middle of the other markers, and just north of the Lijiang marker is the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Zoom in close enough and you can see the Yangtze make it's U-turn and you'll also be able to notice the massive gorge it's created. From Tiger Leaping Gorge we made a quick stop in Lijiang to pick up our things and then caught a bus to Kunming, from where I flew to Beijing and then back to the states.


View Larger Map

Here's a pretty good photo of Kawa Karpo on a clearer day. Legend has it that if you see the sunrise (or sunset, I can't remember) over this mountain, you will lead a happy life. I didn't see either, but I think from what I've seen I'll be leading a pretty happy life.

China Day 3: The Epic Erhai Lu Bike Ride

After four days of doing almost nothing but sitting and laying (sitting on a big boat for two days in Halong Bay, taking a three hour minibus back to Hanoi, taking an overnight train to the border, sitting in a a nine hour bus ride to Kunming, taking a four hour bus to Dali) I am itching to get up and be active. I take a few hours in the morning to explore the streets of Dali, which is a very chilled out and quaint town. To the west are mountains, which I planned to hike up later on, and to the east a few smaller mountains and Erhai Lu, or Erhai Lake, so-called because it's shaped like an ear. There are plenty of locals that approach you on the street trying to sell you some fancy looking hair clip or a chairlift up the mountain or even asking "You Smoke?" and the fact that they are discretely doing so while in their ethnic dress somehow makes it all the more amusing. One local that I welcome an approach from is a short, very small man who asks if I am interested in learning Tai Chi or Kung Fu. I had seen advertisements for this on some cafes around town and thought Tai Chi might be fun, so I talked to him for a bit and decided to take a lesson before I left Dali. I also found a very cheap plane ticket from Kunming to Beijing, at about $125 with tax and everything -- 70% off the original price. I bought the ticket for the morning of the 13th, planning to spend that afternoon in Beijing and the next at the Great Wall before heading out on the 15th. I wandered around a bit more before meeting up with James back at the hostel.

The two of us rented some bikes and took off towards Erhai Lake, hoping to catch a ferry across and maybe hike up the mountain on the other side. The ferry was going to cost us 70 yuan each, or $10, which was outrageous! We tried to bargain but they wouldn't budge, so we took off on our bikes due north in search of another jetty. It was a great bike ride -- we rode through village after village and were surrounded by locals hard at work in the rice fields. No conical hats here, like in Vietnam, but straw hats nonetheless. We had been riding for about three hours but had stopped quite a few times in villages and meandered around them a bit, taking our chances at finding a path to the lake and hopefully a jetty. After flipping quite a few virtual coins as to where we would ride next we still hadn't seen any sign of another jetty. We found a path that took us directly to the lake so we could look across and sure enough, there wasn't anything in sight. Perhaps around those trees to the north? It's now 6:00 and we've got about two and a half hours left until dark. Our best bet is to turn around and make it back to Dali in a flat two hours, but where's the fun in that? How about a toss of the coin to decide for us. Or screw the coin and just keep riding. So we continued onward.

We press on for another hour or so and finally come around to the other side of the lake. We ride down a bumpy and very wet dirt road where everyone looks us at us with quizzical faces, and I just return a smile. James suggests a shortcut and we ride on a thin footpath directly through a field where workers are harvesting their crops and dumping them into their baskets which they strap to their backs. The footpath is very bumpy, meandering, and quite steep at times and though it's a shorter distance than the road it's not so much shorter on time, but it's a great ride and the fact that it wasn't much shorter doesn't matter at all.

Keep truckin' down the road, by now it's paved, and the sun is starting to set and we have no idea how we're going to get home. As dusk arrives we start thinking about hitching a ride from someone back into town but don't see many prospects. With about twenty minutes before dark we stop someone on the road, who, after spending a few minutes playing charades, communicates to us that he'll charge us 150 yuan to take us back to Dali. 150 yuan!! We are obviously getting ripped off so we say no thanks and head down to a village to search for another person to ask. This time same thing, 150 yuan. James and I consider staying overnight in the village, but for some reason I decide I'd rather make it back to Dali tonight so we finally bargain them down to 120. Still a rather steep price considering we can see Dali from where we are standing and it's not too far at all.

Wait for the guy to call his friend with a van big enough to hold our bikes and they give us each a bottle of water and offer us a seat. Jump in the van and off we go. James sits up front and I doze off periodically in the back. It's a long ride back to Dali and takes us about an hour. James keeps track of the odometer which indicates a 45km (28 miles) drive back into town. We calculate all the meandering through the villages and whatnot and figure we rode somewhere between 50 and 60km that day. We are beat, and we go to sleep in the campsite.

China Day 2: Kunming to Dali

Day 1: Border crossing, 9-hr (maybe?) bus ride from Hekou to Kunming. Night in a four-bedroom (two bunks) room at an International Youth Hostel.

Day 2 (4 May 08): Spend the morning lounging in the hostel, catch a 1:00 bus to Dali. Hubert, one of the travelers I met on the bus, explores Kunming for a few hours before catching a 40-hr train to Shanghai on his way to Mongolia. I give James my email and tell him to contact me when he gets to Dali, since he mentioned staying in Kunming for a while as well, but then he decides to jump on the bus with me. So I've ended up with a travel partner -- at least for this bus ride.

We have a nice little bus ride, I think about four hours, and get to Xiaguan, the city nearest Dali Old Town. We try to bargain with a cab driver to give us a cheaper ride to the Old Town but end up taking a bus instead. The bus cost us about 2 yuan each, compared to 40 split between four (we found two other girls to share with) and 7 yuan is US$1, so you do the math. After about 30 minutes of standing on a crowded city bus, all the while my 30-lb backpack strapped on, we finally make it to Dali Old Town and it starts to rain. We wander around for longer than expected trying to find a hostel to stay at and end up near the East Gate at a lovely little place called Hostel #7 or something like that. Free internet and free laundry sounds like a deal so we throw our bags down for the night. We go the cheap route, as always, and pay 20 yuan for a dorm bed... errr I mean a tent. Our room has a total of six tents and the walls are painted with trees. There's even a big rope-light star on the ceiling, very fun.

Downstairs to throw in some laundry and I see James talking to an older man of about 70 or 80, I can't quite remember. His name is Arnold and he talks quite a bit, but has some interesting things to say. He's originally from the States but has lived in Europe for quite some time; we invite him to grab a bite to eat with us. The three of us walk up the street, Arnold being pretty quick on his feet and me, exhausted as I am, having quite a time just keeping in step with the two. We stop at a place just up the street with loads of veggies and even some seafood, pick out a couple of things, and they cook them all up real good and before we know it we've got too much food to eat. Complimented with green tea, of course, of which I drink probably five cups, and Arnold only drinks one because otherwise he'll be up all night. Arnold tells us his stories of which I presently can't recall but which James can inform me of later because I know he remembers many of them because they were absolutely amazing. Arnold is a legend in his own time.

Finish up our dinner and James being the social butterfly he is suggests we check out Dali's nightlife. There's not a whole lot to it, especially since it was a bit wet outside, but we hop inside an empty cafe for a drink. I order a Kahlua and coffee and Arnold gets some tea. He won't mind being up a little bit later. It's very chilly outside so we grab an upstairs table where the windows are closed. I'm informed by James that the bathroom has a sign reading "No Shitting" or something to that extent. Finish with our drinks and head to another place down the street, Bad Monkey.

Real nice crowd there and even some Johnny Cash being played by a guy on a guitar. Smells like grass inside. Probably the liveliest place in Dali but still very chill, thanks to the amazingly comfortable furniture and pillows they've got. Drink a few Dali beers, Arnold goes back to the campsite, and James and I hang out for a while longer, finish our beer, and head back for the night. All in all a relaxing evening in Dali. Excited to explore a bit tomorrow.

Home Sweet Home

Well it's been about six weeks since I arrived back in the states and sooooo much has happened between Kunming and my arrival home. My life is now back to the routine of school-work-study and unfortunately all traveling is finished for now. For how long, I can't say exactly, but you just wait... five or six years from now and I will be on my way to India, Nepal, and Tibet!

I've got most of my "Best of" photos uploaded to my smugmug so keep yourself busy browsing through those (the photos of Yunnan are AMAZING, I can assure you) until I get around to finishing up the Kunming > Dali > Shangri-La > Kawa Karpo > Lijiang > flight home. A LOT happened, trust me, so it will take me a while.

Best of Vietnam
Best of Yunnan
Best of the Epic Kawa Karpo Trek (seriously, look at this one--gorgeous!!)