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