Rest Day in Lijiang

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Rest day in Lijiang

Day 8

Rest day is a bit of a misnomer since I seemed to have been busy doing jobs most of the day. First a trip to a bike shop to borrow a headset spanner for Kristine. They had plenty of Bikes and just one small toolbox of spanners which would struggle to sell at a jumble sale. However, I found a large adjustable spanner which a ploughman must have left there one day and we managed to tighten up the bearing. A trip to the hospital to see Roger and Elaine and they were still waiting for a letter from the doctor to say they could not operate and the patient must be taken elsewhere. Otherwise the air ambulance would not be allowed to fly to Lijiang. The paperwork and beaurocracy is unbelievable. Luckily I had taken my I Pad to take a few photos on the way because when we got there Elaine wanted a copy of the doctor's letter to be emailed to the insurers. I photographed it and sent it to them when we got back to the hotel as there is no WiFi in the hospital. Later we got our bus to come back to the hotel from the parking spot 2 miles away and we unloaded Roger and Elaine's bikes and bagged them up, ready for despatch to home later in the week. After all this I managed to snatch an hour or so in the Jade Snowy Mountain Park with Jeff and visited the Naxi Museum, which was quite interesting giving information on the local people and customs going back 1000 years. In the evening we had our evening meal opposite our hotel (the San He), where we had a good meal, which included chips. Everyone was in ecstasy. Later we went to see the Naxi Orchestra which consisted of local Naxi Minority people playing ancient instruments. The oldest player was 88 and many had long grey beards in the old Chinese tradition. Many tunes sounded the same to me but it was very interesting and worth seeing. The large drum was about 4’ in diameter and there were several nice sounding gongs. Out in the streets of Lijiang at night is mayhem with bars all trying to be noisier than their neighbours and a man on a drum in the street who needs lessons, or a gun. We can hear him on his bongo until far past our beauty sleep time. Amen.

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Photos

Hotel
San He Hotel Foyer

Street life
Old Naxi lady smoking in street. Lijiang