Vance and Bobbi travel to Yunnan province
China, October 2006
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For my birthday gift this year, Vance took me to China! It was special because besides being my birthday trip, it was one of the first times we have travelled alone since we had kids 28 years ago. It nicely coincided with a ten day Eid holiday, so we decided to do something special. Vance had made numerous trip to China, but I had only gone once years ago. We decided to go to northern Yunnan, a place Vance had always wanted to visit.
Our Bubbleshare pictures disappeared with the demise of that provider :-( we've interspersed some from that collection here) Miss Bubbleshare)
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DEPARTURE
We started the trip in our usual fashion of rush packing and sleep-deprived nights trying to get things caught up so we could depart. We were flying on Thai Airways from Dubai, and fell asleep immediately on the bus from Abu Dhabi to Dubai airport. We woke up half an hour later to find that we were still in Abu Dhabi, parked not far from our house. The bus driver had stopped for dinner and Iftar prayers. We finally started up again and arrived at the airport barely in time to catch our flight to Kunming via Bangkok.
When we arrived at Bangkok airport, we had a couple of hours to wait. We were still so exhausted from the hectic pace before we left, that we lay down on comfortable benches in a quiet lounge at the new airport and fell asleep. Fortunately, almost by chance, we woke up just in time to catch our connecting flight to Kunming.
KUNMING
Kunming was where we could get a plane ticket to from Dubai, but we really wanted to go to Lijiang and Dali, so we had been reading up in Lonely Planet how to get to those places from Kunming. We thought it would be a matter of deciding whether to take the overnight bus or train. But when we landed in Kunming, we found that we could catch a flight that afternoon to Lijiang. It seemed like a good idea, since we had little time and we felt it would be worth the money, around $80 each. So we bought tickets and left that day without seeing much of Kunming beyond boulevard outside the airport.
LIJIANG
We were worried about being cold in Lijiang because Yahoo weather predicted near freezing temperatures in the upcoming days. So we were pleasantly surprised to find that the weather was crisp and clear, and not at all cold when we arrived. We immediately set out for the walled old town, a UNESCO heritage city, the most interesting part of Lijiang. Since it was already night by the time we arrived there, we quickly found a hotel, a tad expensive by Chinese standards but clean and comfortable and conveniently located in the old town. After settling in, we decided to get oriented and have dinner.
The old town of Lijiang is captivating. It's no wonder that tourist flock there, and it's especially loved by Chinese tourists who enjoy the town uniquely, making the tourists themselves interesting to watch and be with.
On our first night, we ate at a charming restaurant with tables outside by the river. We consistently ate well in Lijiang; some of the delights that come to mind include pork, chicken, noodles and delicious vegetable varieties. These meals would be washed down by beer and occasionally plum wine. We never ate at a boring spot - we were constantly entertained by the passing crowd, flowing water, and beautiful scenery.
The next day we moved to a hotel called Panorama up the cobblestone stairway on the north side of the old town. This room was smaller, cheaper, but had cozy blankets and a nicer view of the town and mountains. The view was its one drawback. In the morning Chinese tourists would come there for sunrise photos and chatter loudly beneath our window.
We walked into town and bought tickets for the famous Naxi music concert to take place later that evening. Here again, the tickets were a bit expensive but we felt we couldn't miss the opportunity to listen to a classical Chinese music.
We decided to spend the day exploring the Old Town. We were happy to find a coffee shop across from our hotel selling delicious coffee. Vance was surprised because on previous trips to China not long ago, he could hardly find a good cup of coffee. Now coffee shops have cropped up everywhere, and we started each day with strong Yunnan mountain coffee or cappuccino.
Lijiang was buzzing with activity. The streets were cobblestone, and cars were forbidden so apart from the occasional exception for municipality vans there were no vehicles to dodge, though the place was swarming with pedestrians and bikes. We saw row and after row of souvenir shops selling everything from yak-bone combs, to clothes, food and flowers. The town consists of shops, hotels, and restaurants, surrounded by rivers, bridges,and canals. We visited the waterwheel, and walked up to a temple over looking the town.
It started raining so we ducked into a restaurant serving noodles and cheap beer. When the rain stopped, we went back to our room and bathed and used the free internet there to pass time before the music concert. Suddenly, Vance came rushing away from his computer, as he noticed that the time on the computer did not match the time on our watches. Apparently, there is an hour difference between Bangkok and Lijiang and the music concert had already begun. We rushed to the music hall to hear the remaining concert.
We enjoyed listening to the music and seeing the ancient instruments, but the conductor had the habit of giving long explanations first in Chinese, then in English. We noticed later that this was mentioned in our Lonely Planet, and it marred the program somewhat for although we were interested in the history of the music, we really came there to hear the instruments and voices. Still, it was an enjoyable experience.
After the show, we hit the narrow streets which had become lively with people enjoying life. One street in particular was very colorful. The street consisted of rows of two-story restaurants and bars separated by a small canal. Employees and guests at one restaurant, from their open-air balconies or street sidetables, or from the banks of the canal just outside the establishment, would challenge the restaurant directly across the river to a singing contest.
As we eventually divined, each group had to come up with a new song - they would sing a couple of lines from the song, and then sing a phrase "Yaso, Yaso, Ya Ya SO!" as a challenge to the opposing "team" to come up with a new song. The group to fail to think of a new tune in the time it took the others to fire off theirs would lose. This contest was going on up and down the street from dozens of adjacent restaurants - men and women singing from windows, waitresses in ethnic dress standing outside their restaurant, were all a part of this lively scene. One charming thing about this is that although there was a crowd consuming a lot of alcohol, things never got violent or rowdy. Every night we enjoyed going to Yasu street and watching the gaiety.
The following day, we decided to rent bicycles and go to a town we had read about called Baisha. Bike rentals cost a mere couple of dollars for the day. The day was fresh and sunny, with a few rain showers falling throughout the day, and the trip through the countryside by bike was pleasant, the terrain level. Baisha used to be the capital of the Naxi empire, but today it remains a charmingly rustic little town, with a colorful resident Chinese-medicine doctor who has become quite famous to writers and travelers. A small ethnic band were playing music on traditional instruments. In return for a token contribution, they encouraged tourists to join them on percussion. It started to rain so we had a tasty lunch with beer while we sat out the short downpour in a restaurant opposite the performance. Our table was under a veranda where we could listen to the music and watch the peasant traffic pass in the street. It was a surprise high-point of our excursion in the outskirts of Lijiang.
We visited another tourist town on our way back, once again very tastefully developed. Neither Bobbi nor Vance remember the name of the place off the tops of our heads, but it was an interesting enterprise for a town capitalizing on its proximity to Lijiang. The township had walled itself in and posted guards at the roads that entered it, where we came upon the place by bike and were sent by gesturing police to the entrance to the city where you pay to get in. We probably would not have bothered but some tourists we'd met in Baisha told us they had gone there by accident and were pleasantly surprised. After paying up, we were allowed to pass on our bikes, but passengers in cars had to park and alight on foot. There your choices were to walk or hire a horse or bullock cart, many of those about.
The town was in the midst of construction, with concrete lying about and building projects in evidence, but the tourist shops and kitschy restaurants were in full operation in the streets radiating off the cash-kiosk entrance, and we bicycled some distance down the meandering roads before the town took on a normal appearance. It became more charming the further away from the tacky entrance we got. There was a river with an attractive old bridge over it, where an old man in traditional dress smoked a long pipe, and some newlyweds were having photos made. The streets on the other side of the river had the most appealing cafes and bars, but we were neither hungry nor thirsty, and we had to get the bikes back by sundown, so we whisked through and back down the country roadways to return via the grand boulevard to Lijiang, and another night watching people put votive candles into the river from the bridge by the main square, with the sounds of yaso yaso ya ya so reverberating from the banks of the canal.
We woke up the next day to a beautiful sunny day, but the weather was getting considerably colder day by day and this was the coldest day yet. Also, we had to get moving down towards Dali and Kunming. So, we packed up and took one last walk through town to the bus stop.
We managed to get a mini-van to take us to Dali. The trip took about 5 hours and was pretty uneventful and we both got some sleep along the way.
DALI
There are two towns called Dali near one another in the valley between the lake and the mountains, and there is some confusion between the two. Tourists occasionally get down at Dali City and look for the old town, only to find they have to take another bus to the old walled city. Our van was heading for the new town, so we had to be sure and get off at the place where the highway passed the old city. Had we known that the three ancient tall pagodas were just outside the old town it would have been easy to spot where we were going. As it was we kept an eye out for road signs (in English and Chinese kanji) and managed to get down at the right spot. But there was no indication of where to WALK from here. We chose the most obvious direction and eventually found our way to the old town to find a room.
The weather was warmer, and humid, and the old town did not match up to Lijiang's charm. We looked at one room in the middle of the old town. Our impression was that the area had become a tourist ghetto. It was probably at one time charming, but with the advent of a large number of tourists, Dali seemed to lose it's identity. We were often approached by tenacious sellers, trying to pawn off their goods to us whether we wanted them or not - bracelets, hair bows, and flowers were particularly on the market and the sales people roaming the streets saw us as easy targets. The room we looked at, the Tibetan hostel, did not impress us; it was off a courtyard with noisy chambermaids, and it was pretty noisy in the old town with the CD players of the many bars and clubs belting out loud music.
Vance had read about a hotel called MCA which was outside the ornate gate with its Oriental curved gables of the old town proper, and we thought it would be worth a look to see if it were quieter. Luckily, it was, it was just as cheap as any of the hippy flophouses in the center, and had more charm. We were shown to a good sized room downstairs, but I recalled the noise of people above us in other hotels as they clomped about. So we asked for an upstairs room, and when we saw the room they showed us was perfect. It had hot water, a sit down toilet (our first on that trip, though the point may have escaped mention up to now), and a large window looking over the courtyard and with a tree right outside our window. The window had a sill near the floor, and we habitually sat on the window sill, looking out over the courtyard, while we had a beer or two in the comfort of this large, well appointed room.
After we checked in, we went back to town, a pleasant stroll down the main shopping street of perhaps half a kilometer, as we had become thirsty and hungry on the trip from Lijiang. At least we noticed that there were many options for eating, and again, we always ate well. We also noticed that prices were cheaper here than in Lijiang, and we could have almost anything we wanted. What did we want? Pizza? Korean food? We stopped at a coffee shop run by a deaf co-op for starters, where we could have had some western style sandwiches. Thirst taken care of, we looked into our food options, and saw a picture of a small noodle soup on a menu outside a cafeteria, and ordered a bowl of noodles, very simple, but delicious.
We had read in Lonely Planet about a site called Three Pagodas outside of town, and decided to head there after lunch. We walked out the gate in the walls, where lady guides in traditional dress encouraged tourist to tip them in return for photo ops, and we headed for the nearest pagoda we could see a short walk across the main highway. We walked up a hill to it but found it was gated and the guard there told us in gesture and facial expression that it was closed for semi-permanent repairs. It wasn't one of the Three Pagodas, actually, which we could now see some distance away down the highway running alongside the old walls. We started walking down that highway and eventually came on a taxi stand where we bargained for a tuk tuk to go the rest of the distance. We were driven to a large parking lot with tour buses parked in abundance and we were shocked at the price of entrance - about 20 dollars each. Now, we don't mind paying a lot of money for an adventure - diving, for example - but we could not justify the price to just go see something that was in any event clearly visible from outside. So we opted out of 'visiting' the pagodas.
Our tuk tuk driver had been stalking us and when he saw we declined to visit the pagodas he touted us with alternate destinations. He spoke no English, but 'cable car' was in his vocabulary, and he pointed it out going up the mountain, and this was how we fixed on where it was. It was too late that afternoon to go up the mountain, except maybe to ride the cable car up and back down again, but it occurred to us that the lake might be fun to visit, and the driver didn't want but a couple of dollars to take us there, so we went down there.
We were taken to a small port where a small fleet of tour boats each flying red and yellow Chinese maritime flags lay moored on a peer that you had to pay to get on. Touts here tried to get us on the boats, but there was only an hour left in the day and the tours seemed to be three hours or so. There was a small town behind the harbor and we figured there should be a place to get a beer there at a place with a lake view. NOT. No way. The best thing we could find in that town was a local bus back to Dali.
We went back to town, wondering what to do next. By now, nighttime had fallen and although there were a lot of tourists and souvenir shops, we didn't see Dali as being much of a cultural town. But as usual, life has surprises. As we were walking around town, we decided to give up and go back to our hotel. But we heard music ..... and to our delight, there was an ensemble playing Chinese classical music with voice. They group was playing from a pagoda at the edge of town, and there were no crowds to fight. Apparently, it was not advertised in any place that tourists would see, and judging from the audience that turned up in the course of taking the night airs, might have been spontaneous.
Vance saw a restaurant nearby with tables outside and he asked if I wanted to get some food and sit while listening to the music. It seemed like a great idea, but there was no English menu. Luckily, they displayed their fresh ingredients on the floor, and they also had some pictures of the dishes on their Chinese menu board. We decided to try for a bowl of noodles with chicken, mushrooms, and a variety of vegetables which we selected ourselves. That was all we wanted...just a bowl of noodles. We pointed to the ingredients we wanted with our noodles and sat back and watched the show. To our surprise, each ingredient we ordered was an entire separate dish, so we wound up ordering about 7 or 8 separate dishes - mushrooms in sauce, chicken in peanuts, etc. It was way too much food, but delicious. So we ate as much as we could and enjoyed the show. We had no idea about the price, either...they could have charged anything, and a meal like this in Lijiang would have been maybe 25 dollars. Instead, when they brought the bill, we were pleasantly surprisedby the bill of about five dollars only! So we went back to our room, sated, entertained, and happy.
The next morning dawned with fairly clear skies so we decided to ride the gondola to the top of the mountain, visit some temples on the mountains, and then hopefully walk back down the mountain. We did read a warning in Lonely Planet saying that there had been cases of robbery along the mountain trails, and even the murder of a tourist in 1997. Anyway, we felt quite safe as we never ever felt threatened in China, and decided to do the trip. The chair lift ride took us to the top of the mountain and got us there in our open bench just as it started raining. We sheltered in the temple grounds there and luckily, the rain didn't last long, so we were able to start our walk. We wanted to look for the temple proper, but the signs were confusing. We found an amazing paved walkway around the perimeter of the mountain and took the path to the right to see where it would lead. Several kilometers later, the path was sealed off, but there was a dirt track running up the side of the mountain, so we decided to explore some more. This trail was in some parts, muddy and slippery, and in other places there were steps of stone. The path led to a number of lovely waterfalls and streams, and we were almost alone on the path.
It was getting mid-afternoon, so we decided to go back to the chairlift and try again to find the temple. When we got back to where we started the walk, we saw more signs and noticed the paved walkway continuing in the opposite direction. We saw a sign saying that Gantong was 11 kilometers away, about the same distance we had just covered, and decided to go ahead and see what was there. This was a bit of a risk because we had just enough daylight to cover the distance and if the way down the mountain was not doable in the dark our best option would be to return to our starting point. We would have to do this in the dark, and the chair lift would not be working at night, but there was a hostel there and a place to get food, and we figured we could retrace the 11 km on the good path in the dark if we had to.
We were soon reminded though that it might not be as simple as that. After we had walked some ways, we saw a sign that said "Beware, you are going to a wild place; don't go alone!" As we passed the sign, we heard a crash coming from some trees overhead, and then another crash, and another. We couldn't see what it was - human, animals, or just a limb falling. But since it happened just as we passed the sign, it took me aback a little. However, we could see a couple of walkers way in front of us and others around a bend behind us, so we decided never mind, continue.
As has been mentioned, Vance had calculated that we were not going to reach the destination in time to return to the chair lift which stops operating at dusk in time to make the last ride down. We were relieved to see that if we had to walk back in the dark, the path was at least excellent, we had flashlights, and we had seen the hotel somewhere near the chairlift. So we decided to keep walking, and if worse came to worse, we would show up at the hotel in the mountain and hope for a room or a space to sleep. We didn't bring any luggage with us, but we were enjoying the view so much and loving each other's company, we didn't want to give up and head back without seeing where the path went. We were almost at the end, when Vance saw a 2nd set of chairlifts at the end of the path! This was a surprise. It wasn't mentioned in our guidebooks, but it looked to be a viable way down. If we could make it in time (we had no idea what was at the bottom). If we could use the lift, we would not have to retrace our path to the original chairlift. We kind of liked that idea, since it would take awhile to walk back and find the mountain hotel in the dark. As luck would have it, the last trip down was in half in hour, so we took the chairlift down and found ourselves in the temple town of Gantong a bit outside of Dali. And best of all, there was a single taxi still hanging around, just for us! The other tourists had departed and the shops were closing up. We felt fortunate to be down the mountain and on our way to the hotel.
We never got to see the temples. On the mountain we simply couldn't find them, and the one at Gantong was a couple of km walking up the hill from the chair lift and it was growing dusk. It wouldn't have been a pleasant walk either; it started pouring down rain as the taxi dropped us off at our doorstep. At that point we felt elated that we had had an enjoyable day, and got back to our room safe and dry.
The next day was my birthday! We had taken the tuk tuk to Erhai Lake on our first day in Dali, and were not enthused by the prospect of a boat ride around the lake (we have been on so many boat trips) but decided over coffee as we saw clouds move in, it would be a good day to sit on a boat and ride around a lake. Vance walked over to the Tibetan Hostel next to where we were having coffee and fruit salad and discovered that the tourist center could make the arrangements for us at less than street cost, and ten minutes later, we were on our way.
The ten minute delay had been to call us a guide, a pleasant young lady who conducted us to the bus stop and then rode with us to the port we had visited two days before. The guide paid for our ticket and then told us which boat to sit on and wait. And we did .... wait and wait and wait. It started pouring down rain and we moved in to comfortable seats inside the cockpit and waited and read. When the rain let up I went off in search of information and found our guide was still at the pier, she hadn't just left us. She assured me that the boat would be leaving shortly. Finally a few more people arrived and we set sail.
We sailed across the lake, past a headland on the other side with a temple complex on it. Our first stop was an island of little interest. And we had to pay an entrance fee to set foot ashore at the village there, a scam applied solely to tourists. It may be more attractive in nicer weather, but we were not impressed in the drizzle and we were pursued by one lady demanding money for 'showing' us around, though we walked ahead in such a way as to evade her.
Meanwhile, the rain kept coming so we decided to wait and have a beer near the boat harbor. Inside the restaurant, were others from our boat including two men - I think they must have been brothers, or perhaps business partners. They started sending over food from their plates for us to try, and paid for our beers too. Such kindness was touching and brightened up the day.
Our next stop was at temple. The weather was clearing, and the grounds were beautiful, with flowers and ponds surrounding the temple. The brothers from our boat again treated us by paying for us to be photographed with ladies in native dress with them. Some of the pictures were taken with our camera :-) We toured the temple, and then the boat took us back. All in all, it was a nice way to spend a rainy day.
Back in Dali, we happened on a performance at dusk in a temple, and we took this picture from a restaurant nearby with a conveniently excellent view.
We decided the next day to head for Kunming to sleep there that night and have a morning in Kunming before we departed for Bangkok and then home.
KUNMING
Our last stop in Yunnan was a night in Kunming. We arrived there by bus in a confusion of rain and unfamiliarity of a crowded sidewalk bus stop and snarl of swishing traffic, a call to keep one's wits about one, but there was a man on the bus from Taiwan who offered to share a cab with us, and he made sure we got to the Camelia Hotel recommended by Lonely Planet. It wasn't expensive but cost more than we were used to paying, but it was a proper hotel - not like the guesthouses we were accustomed to. Anyway, we were pleased with the room but as we were leaving to find dinner, we heard an Australian lady complaining on the phone loudly about how the tour she was with had promised her a 3 star hotel, but they put her in this filthy dump instead! We looked at each as we could see nothing at all wrong with the hotel (aside from what was swept under the rugs perhaps). True, it was not up to Hilton standards, but we found it perfectly clean, with sit-down toilets and hot water showers, too. It just goes to show that people have different expectations and different tastes. But we were happy and that is all that mattered to us. We felt even happier when we went to eat at the nearby "City Cafe", also a LP recommendation.
The food was delicious as usual and they even had a list of wines. Unable to make an informed selection, we decided to order a glass of each of the 4 or 5 listed on the menu. Some of the wines turned out to be almost undrinkable, but others were quite good. Surprisingly, we liked the white wines better than the reds, which is unusual for us as we generally prefer red.
We decided to walk off the big meal before returning to the hotel, and we saw a shop selling drinks, and since we were in a wine tasting mood, we bought a bottle of honey wine to take back to our room. We took our showers and opened the bottle of honey wine. It was smooth and very tasty. In fact, so tasty, that Vance went out to find another bottle after we had consumed the entire bottle. Luckily, the shop was closed, because we really didn't need more wine and we were to fly the next day! Still, it was another surprise. That is one of the things about travelling. You never know what surprises are in store for you. Even if I had a million dollars, I'd still want to stay in guesthouses, and buy bottles of unknown substances like honey wine. That is why Vance and I are so compatible with travelling - we both want to try new things, and sometimes it works and other times it does not work so well, but it's always worth the try. (Vance's comment: the wine tasted very much like 'tej', the honey drink of Ethiopia)
Next morning, we explored Kunming. For a large city, it is very pleasant, with parks and wide avenues,
and outdoor sculptures.
Some people set up office outdoors giving massages, and children were feeding food to koi fish in the fountain outside of Carrefour.
A group of employees of a clothing store were lined up outside the store wearing their uniforms as a "cheerleader" (maybe their supervisor) led them to chant slogans and clap their hands. Then, he blew his whistle and they marched off to work. I guess that is one way of promoting team spirit!
At last we checked out of our hotel, and our trip was over, except for a dance performance in the Duty Free area of Bangkok's new airport. We look forward to more adventures - may it be China, or anywhere else in the world!
On Reflection
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