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For the Spring Festival, Maple Leaf shuts its doors for a week and lets both teachers and students free on the world. Some of my coworkers headed to the Philippines and Thailand, while others chose to lay low in DaLian and just recover from what felt like a long stretch in term 3. I went to Yunnan Province, and got as close to Tibet as I probably ever will, unless time and money suddenly afford themselves more frequently to me.
We arrived in Kunming and things instantly went awry. My travel buddy hadn't printed off the Chinese directions to our hostel, and we couldn't get the number to work. We were both getting hungry and feeling pretty tired, so we went to a different hostel to get help in finding the place we had booked. In my haste, as we were checking in, I realized (with a deep, sinking, frantic realization) that I had left my purse in the taxi we had just exited. Inside that purse was my passport, Tom's passport, $200 cash, my credit card, my Canadian and Chinese bank cards, my ipod, my camera, all the information for our flights and hotels, and my house keys. Swearing
Dali
Day 1, and about to rain again started. I looked behind and under our backpacks about ten times. I went into the street and just stood there, wondering if perhaps I closed my eyes and re-opened them, things would turn out differently. But no, no, every time I re-opened my eyes, my purse was still gone. F*&*.
After about 15 minutes of trying to figure out what to do (and some hesitant help on the part of a rather unfriendly receptionist), I was in the street and Tom was on the phone with the taxi company explaining that no, we had not noticed the taxi number, and no, we did not have their license plate number or name of the taxi driver, when, all of a sudden, a taxi pulled up. The two passengers were looking at me with huge grins on their faces, and miming the shape of a bag. I leaped up and raced over, and the cab driver handed me my purse. I could have kissed each person in that cab but instead settled for giant bows and shouting "xie xie! Xie xie nie! Woda Tiena, xie xie!" over and over. I raced inside and shared the good news. To calm our nerves
that night we drank local Dali beer at the Camel Cafe and discussed what misfortune would have begot us had that purse not shown up, everything in tact. I have a lot of gratitude for those honest folk!
Next day, we took a four hour journey to Dali, an old, walled city north of Kunming. The bus was fine, but the rural toilets were not. I don't think I will ever get used to using a squat toilet with no door, while people cruise by looking for empty toilets. My sense of privacy is decidedly Western.
When we arrived in Dali (and stayed at the Lily Pad, which I recommend), clouds had settled low over the city and the rain wasn't just threatening, it was starting to punch. We ducked inside a chicken restaurant to wait it out. From the chicken restaurant, we made our rounds through of several of the local bars. We didn't see much of Dali that night, but we sure did get to know their local brew.
In the morning, we explored the city separately, as Tom wanted to do more shopping and I wanted to walk from gate to gate. Dali has
the feel of a Southeast Asian city with its backpackers' guesthouses, restaurants, and banana pancakes, but it also feels like a small and ancient Chinese city (mission accomplished, Dali--I presume that's the feel you were going for), minus the busses and power lines. It's set against the mountains and a great lake. I would have liked to stay a little longer as it felt like a great place to unwind and explore. We had, however, booked a minibus to Lijiang for that afternoon (we rode with heavy smokers who tapped their ashes into sloshing buckets of water), and three hours later we arrived at the amazing Panba Hostel (more like guesthouse/mini hotel). It's set down a very quiet alley that is not far from the centre of Old Town Lijiang, but feels like worlds away from all the tourists and hard-bargaining shops. Our patio overlooked the roofs of the town and the mountains beyond. We explored a little and grabbed some dinner canal-side, then went back to our room to get ready for our two-day hike in Tiger Leaping Gorge.
We took another (ugh) three hour minibus ride to Qiaotou and Jane's Tibetan Guesthouse, where the gorge hike officially
starts. We got some info from Jane and then set off. The weather that day had started off freezing cold, but the sun quickly bore down on us. We climbed higher into the hills and looked down over terraced fields of rice, some bleached yellow from drought, some emerald green from close attention. We passed mule after mule, and goat shepherd after goat shepherd. We hit the 28 bends and climbed up, and up, and up, and up, and up (I would like to write that 28 times just so your eyes can begin to feel as tired as my legs did, but I'm nicer than that). After 4 hours, and around 5pm, we came across the Tea Horse Guesthouse and decided to call it a day. We sat around with a few other hikers and ate noodles. Our room was sparse but clean, and we had a gorgeous view of the soaring, snow-capped mountains. The only thing that was difficult for me was the bathroom: another open-door squat toilet with a strange, angled and tiled contraption that ran down between the concrete trough you had to stand over. I wish I'd taken a picture. However, despite my complaining, it
was very clean. And it had a view of the rice terraces.
Day two of the hike we got a little lost. We somehow took a wrong turn and ended up in the rice fields instead of above them, and a friendly farmer told us to keep walking through them and turn left. However, as we did this, we frightened a woman walking with a cow, and her cow started when she yelled and it fell off the ledge it was walking along. We decided at that moment to just turn back and try to find where we had lost our way. Righted on the proper trail, we climbed along the edge of the mountain next to plummeting cliffs. We walked over limestone, boulders, under waterfalls, and through tiny villages. The sky was completely clear that day and the photos turned out rather well, if I do say so myself. The climb down from the mountain took quite a while, and we were grateful it hadn't rained, as the mud would have been slick and dangerous. Every time I slipped in the dust I thought about how much worse it would be in the muck.
When we had
made it to the end of the trek, we found four other people to share a taxi back to Qiaotou/Lijiang. The highway, we had been told, was officially closed (as was the Gorge hike), but money talks in China. The minibus started driving, and as it did, I instantly regretted sitting in the front seat. We were grazing the edge of the road--a sheer drop to the river below. Giant boulders and equipment sometimes blocked our path, causing us to drive even closer to the edge. After 35 bumpy, nail-biting minutes, we wound our way to a recent blasting site, where we had to exit the vehicle, climb over the debris, and get into a different minibus. This was harrowing as rocks were falling while we were crossing, and when we left, we watched a whole pile of rocks give way and slide to the spot we had just been.
Back in Lijiang, showered and clean, we ate dinner at Lamu Tibetan Restaurant (delicious momos--dumplings--and potatoe cakes). The next day we spent shopping and wandering the cobbled streets. I feel as though I had enough of touristy Lijiang (although it is very beautiful), could have seen more of Dali,
and would have enjoyed spending more time in Kunming. I'd definitely go back to Yunnan. I'm rather sad that this spring break is already over....but in 9 weeks I'll be back in Canada for the whole summer!
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Eric
non-member comment
I enjoyed your China post. It looks like you are having a good time there. My blog is looking for travel photos. If you have time, email us some at dirtyhippiesblog@gmail.com and check us out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com Continued fun on your travels, Eric