Blogs from Dali, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 2

Geo: 25.7, 100.15We were only planning to stay a couple of days in the small town of Dali and ended up staying for four days. Dali is a very old town where the first settlements are dated from 3000 years ago. Located at 1900m high, near the lake Erhai, the town is surrounded by mountains up to 4000m high. It is just an awesome place and you can judge by yourself when looking at the photos we took.I (Elfi) had the contact of a friend of a friend (Matthieu), his partner (Dorine) and their newly born daughter. We met the family in a park near the city centre. It's where we tried tea with "crisanteum" flower for the first time. They introduce us to the region and their circle of friends. It is how we got ... read more

Thanks to the painful memories of some ultra-long (>12h) bus/train rides that have been seared into my mind the past year and a half or so, I decided to break up the journey to my next destination. Instead of taking the 17h direct ride to Dali, I made a quick overnight stop in the provincial capital of Kunming, which was also a sneak preview of things to come, as I do plan to return again for some more detailed exploration. Somewhat annoyingly, the 9h ride from Jinghong to Kunming was interrupted by not one, not two, but three military/police checkpoints, all of which demanded identification from every single passenger on the bus, and one of which even did an inspection of some passengers' luggages. Not particularly polite or professional in their approach, I wasn't exactly sure ... read more

I woke up a bit earlier just in case there were any troubles in reaching the bus station – like getting lost when changing buses or taking the bus in the wrong direction for example… ;) Well… getting there couldn’t have been easier though – there was actually very good information at my hostel as to which buses to take and where to change so following the instructions I got there without any problems at all – 10 stops with bus 95, then another 10 with bus 80 and taraaa! …arrived at East Bus Station! And the journey cost me 2yuan only! Happy days! It was funny though when I was getting on the first bus, I let through an old Chinese man, he just couldn’t stop smiling to me later on and even wanted to ... read more

Leaving Weishan by minibus (23 Yunnan each), we arrived on the outskirts of Xiaguan (new city, 18 kilometres south of the old Dali) an hour later. We passed many small workshops making the stone pieces for use as tomb entrances. It would have been a major task carrying the twenty or so pieces of grey stone to where ever they were needed as they looked extremely heavy! The bus dropped us off on the highway at the edge of the city where we caught a moto taxi (5 yuan) to the train station where we knew we would be able to find transport to Dali. You feel quite vulnerable in those tiny little motorbike taxi amidst the traffic, particularly when surrounded by larger buses on both sides! We were really shocked at how the city had ... read more

The beds are so hard that I am struggling to sleep. It took several hours and many shifts of position to get any sleep at all and the the next I heard was my phone ringing at 9am. It was our guide David wanting to know if we had gone to the wrong restaurant since he had not seen us. Us being myself and room mate Jeff from Oz. Today was a steady day roaming around the many streets of this ancient city established in 1382 but much of it rebuilt in the last 20 years or so as a major tourist city occupied by mostly Bai minority people in their distinctive white and blue dresses and fancy head dresses not unlike the American Indians without the feathers. The city is set out in a grid ... read more