Yunnan Day 5 - Dali to Lijiang

In the morning we wandered around Dali Old Town and did some shopping, then we went back to the hotel to wait for the minibus to pick us up to take us to the bus to Lijiang. Just before we were due to leave, a bunch of Oxfam Challenge cyclists from Australia arrived at the hotel. They were all very stoked, I think they had just finished the last cycling leg of their tour around Yunnan, during which they rode more than 400km. They had to each raise $5000 to go on the trip.

The bus ride to Lijiang was interesting, there was a gradual change in soil type and agriculture as we drove higher through the mountains. The train trip from Kunming to Dali had stayed at approximately the same altitude, but the bus went up and down over the mountains. The roads were quite narrow at times and there was not much distance between the wheels and great gulping rivines. However, the driver was actually very good, and seemed to know when it was a good time to do blind passes of slower vehicles (!!##).

We went to a Naxi restaurant for dinner. The Naxi are the local minority here. Fried cheese was again a specialty.

Yunnan Day 3 - Kunming to Dali by train

Thanks to my mum for all the photos here. I kind of relied on her photo taking this trip.

We took the 8.14am train from Kunming to Dali today. We took hard seats as soft seat was sold out when we bought the tickets a few days before. They were only 35RMB each ($6AUS) for a 5 hour ride, but the hotel charged us 20RMB each for the service fee! It was a fairly nice hotel which explains it, they have worked out that foreigners will pay this for the convenience, since its really not that much when converted back to home currency.

We did a few seat swaps once on the train, since we never seem to all be sitting in the same spot despite out seat numbers being consecutive. The 'stare at the foreigner' thing was going strong, its starting to get to me a bit. The last few months its hasn't bothered me too much, I've just ignored it, but the constant blank-faced staring, even when I do a blank-faced stare straight back, is getting a bit annoying. Not that everyone does this, just some people. Lots of people also smile and are very friendly (and offer to swap seats around with us!). We went through something like 120 tunnels during the five hour ride, no idea of the number of bridges. This train line was only opened in 1999 and you can see why. The sheer engineering effort must have been astronomical, and the amount of manpower used amazing. The snowy mountain scheme pales in comparison.

The train took us to Xiaguan, which is the Dali new city. We got a local bus to Dali old city, about 1/2 hour drive (for 1RMB each! I just can't get over it). We were surrounded by women as soon as we got off the bus, touting different hotels, so they could take us there for a commission. They were very annoyed when we got in a taxi without any of them.

We stayed in the MCA guesthouse, just outside the old city walls and about a 10 minute walk to the centre of town. A very nice guesthouse and very convenient to everything. We had dinner at the Bamboo Cafe, which served us local Bai food, we had fried Dali cheese, local Dali beer (or so we were told), chicken and pineapple, shredded beef and curry vegetables.

Walking through the main street of Dali makes you realize that this town has been reconstructed with tourism as its central objective. Dali used to be

Yunnan Day 4 - Dali

Had a fairly lazy morning, took our time getting ready and having breakfast, then set off around 11.30 to walk to Er hai lake, about 3-4 km from Dali Old City. It was a fantastic walk. Once we'd crossed the north south high way we were walking through fields of small plots growing all sorts of vegies and greens. There were people working in the fields, pooring some terrible smelling liquid onto the crops, which I'm sure makes them grow very well. All the work was being done by hand, there was not much in the way of tools or animals being used. We're not sure how they do their ploughing at that time of the year, but on the train from Kunming to Dali we saw some ploughing being done using water buffalo. We certainly haven't seen any tractors being used at all. There was a little village beside the lake called CuiCan, with small lane ways and not much traffic. The lanes were only wide enough for a small track and the buildings came right up to the edge of the road, no footpath. There were lots of bikes and motorbike being used, and one or two cylinder trucks, some with the engines exposed (Rob was giving us a lesson on how they work). We walked through the village to the lake, it was very misty and visibility was poor, it was a fairly drizzly day. No taxis, so we walked back.

In the evening we went to a Tibetan restaurant. My parents had some delicious lamb dishes and fried Dali cheese ( a local specialty). I capitulated and had a beef burger but it wasn't quite like the real thing - the patty was deep fried and a bit crusty. Tasted pretty good though.

Yunnan Day 1 - Shanghai to Kunming

Today, I set off with my parents on a new trip today to Yunnan Province, in the south west of China. Yunnan has a population of 42 million people, twice that of Australia. It has borders with Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi Provinces, and also borders with Tibet, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. So the South east asian culture and environment can be seen a little here. It is 394,000 sq km, compared with Australia at 7,617,930 sq km. The lonely planet says "Yunnan is without doubt one of the most alluring destinations in China.... If you only get to one province in China, this might as well be it."

My parents are visiting for about a month so we set off to Yunnan for 9 days. Today we travelled to Kunming, Yunnan's capital, by plane (3 hours). We checked into a hotel and then spent the day wandering around the city. It's a fairly industrial city (pop 4 million) and pretty standard for a large Chinese city, I didn't find anything there too unusual. One thing worth mentioning is there there seem to be heaps of solar hot water systems on the roofs of many of the buildings. Whoever got the contract for that would have made a killing because they're everywhere. Easy to tell which way is south as they all face in the that direction.

My parents are still getting used to the culture so they were happy to wander the city. We had some lamb kebabs from a street stall - Muslim style, with chilli, and some other spices, maybe cumin and tumeric. Absolutely delicious, and haven't had any problems with street food so far (only with Western food...). We walked through a shopping mall, and you could have been anywhere in the world, all the same. We saw a shop where you can get laser eye surgery. Not sure how much it costs or what the success rate is....

We also wandered through some more grassroots markets. The picture of the meat stall is a common image all around China, I feel a little cautious about buying meat from these places because its just sitting out in the open for hours on end. This market also had live chickens and we all baulked a bit as we walked through since supposedly bird flu can be contracted from dust infected with bird faeces in these markets. The vegie and fruit stalls are also a common site and I have to say the fruit I have here on a regular basis (including from the local 'wet' market in Shanghai - ie meat, seafood, fruit and vegies) is much better than the fruit and vegies that I have in Australia or the US. Its much fresher and hasn't been hanging around half frozen in store rooms and trucks for a few weeks before you buy it (like it has been in Woolworths and Safeway).

We tried to get to a restaurant called '1910 Gare du Sud', recommended in the lonely planet, serving Yunnan specialities. However it was down some back alley, and the Chinese name for the restaurant sounds like South Train Station, so the taxi driver started taking us there until we realized the mistake, but we still couldn't find the place. We ended up going to another restaurant, Brothers Jiang, which serves across-the-bridge noodles, another Yunnan specialty. They bring you all these dishes of raw vegies and semi cooked meat (and raw eggs) and rice noodles. Then they bring you a steaming soup and you put everything in there to cook, and then eat it. It was interesting but I didn't find it very flavoursome. Apparently Brothers Jiang is a bit of a chain store so that might explain it.

Apart from that we managed to find a convenience store and stocked up on some Western type snacks which are always good to have handy.