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 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.