DALI

From Yangshuo I traveled west on an overnight train to Yunnan Province and the city of Kunming. Yunnan sits on China’s southwestern border with Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, and contains over twenty of China’s fifty-six ethnic groups. It’s a land of converging countries where the range of nationalities and unique cultures transcend government boundaries. The geographic landscape is also very diverse, from the jungles of the south, to the dry and arid snow-capped mountainous regions of the northwest. I’d heard a lot about Yunnan’s splendor, and I was excited to finally get a taste!

Kunming has a reputation as a laid-back city, and after arriving I fell into character and spent a couple of day’s relaxing and enjoying the warm weather. I went for a few walks, explored some parks and markets, and even ventured into a Chinese Wal-Mart to look for some Q-tips - that was interesting. Can I use a cliché and say that it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack? Unlike Wal-Marts in America that are big and lofty and perched on the outskirts of suburbia, Chinese Wal-Marts are lodged in the middle of the city and are a claustrophobic tangle. In fact, I think saying, 'it's like trying to find a Q-tip in a Chinese Wal-Mart' sounds like the perfect contemporary version of the old saying. Anyway, after a day or so I met up with my friend Yago and we took off for Dali. Yago and I met in Guilin, and after realizing that we were both heading to Yunnan, decided to meet up and go on some adventures together. He ended up being a great travel buddy.

The four hour bus ride from Kunming took us to the southern tip of Erhai Lake, where the old town of Dali rests below the gentle slopes of a neighboring mountain range. We decided to stay for only one day, so after a dumpling feast at the hostel we set out to explore the old-town by night. There wasn’t a whole lot going on, but after some wandering we came across a bar called Bad Monkey. I felt as though I’d stumbled back into Thailand, with a rowdy traveler and ex-pat crowd similar to something you’d find on the islands in one of China’s neighboring countries to the south. After grabbing a couple of beers from a dread-locked bartender, we sat down to take in the scene, and it wasn’t long before an overly excited young ex-pat sat down with us, eager to share his wild life-story. Bro, right now I’m just trying to make rent ‘cause I like just opened my own boutique here in town last week. I’m like selling vintage clothes that I bought in LA - lugged ‘em all back on the plane, carry-on. Yeah bro, growin‘ some weed up in the mountains too...  Sounded like a great business plan, probably funded by Mommy & Daddy Are Rich, Inc. It went on and on, but luckily we escaped after a few beers, and over the next few days found ourselves reciting the one-sided conversation to each other for entertainment.

Exploring Dali by day was a different experience, the town was full of Chinese tourists and the shops and restaurants along the various walking streets were open for business and full of customers. In the afternoon we left the old-town to check out the Three Pagodas and the Chongsheng Temple. The Three Pagodas, built to scare off dragons, are some of the oldest structures in the region, and the Chongsheng Temple, located behind the pagodas and up the hill a ways, gave way to some nice views of Erhai Lake and the various villages that spot its shoreline. That night we caught a bus to Lijiang, but not before an hour-long motorbike ride along the lake shore. We really packed it in during our short stay in Dali, but we’d heard good things about our next destination, and were eager to make our way up into the mountains...