Hello from Bangkok, Thailand! Night 1 in Bangkok: I got here earlier this week from Kunming. I happened to re-connect with another traveler who I went biking with in Lijiang. We were on the same flight to Bangkok, which was nice since I had some company transiting from BKK airport to the city center. We took the bus to Khao San area, and looked for hotels and had dinner together. Day 1: I was in Bangkok by myself one day while I waited from my friend to come from SF. Since I had a slight cold, I just spent the day getting my laundry done, reading, eating Thai food, etc. It was nice to have some down time and I felt much better after a day of rest. Day 2 in Bangkok: My friend J met ... read more

Dali is surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges - Cangshan and one range that I don't know the name of. Our driver told us it was nicknamed "Chicken Feet Mountain". Who knows. Cangshan is on the west side of Erhai Lake. There are two "summit" areas. I only went to the top of the first area (2450 m). From the mountain top, you can see all of Dali and Erhai. Anyway, I rode a horse up Cangshan today. The trail was very muddy and steep. The poor horse. The ride up took about 1.5 hours. The views were so-so. The trees were nice, but some of the hillside has graves/tombstones. A bit eerie if you think too hard. I'm glad I didn't hike up. It would have been too steep for me. It's basically straight up. There ... read more

Believe it or not, all I brought with me for my 35 day trip was an oversized backpack. I somehow have survived alternating between two pairs of jeans. However, in Dali I sent one pair to the cleaners and never got it back! I was pretty unhappy, but left to Lijiang and called the cleaners 3 times to follow up. I was pretty desperate for another pair of pants, so while I was in Lijiang I picked up a pair of jeans for Y230. They are OK, but not the greatest pair of jeans. Anyway, I came back to Dali and they found my tshirt, but no jeans. In my broken Chinese I argued about what they were going to do to compensate me. I got in touch with the owner (老板) of the cleaners and ... read more

Back in Dali. Yunnan is supposed to be very ethnically diverse - meaning, there are a lot of ethic minorities. I had finished reading "Leaving Mother Lake" which is about the Mosuo Nationality. Technically, the Mosu are classified with the Naxi Nationality. In Lijiang, you see so many women laborers - because in Naxi culture, women work and provide. There are a lot of female cab drivers, female police, etc. Interesting. Maybe Lijiang would be a good place for Westerners to live - more gender equality? In Lijiang, I saw Naxi women carrying around loads of bricks, shoveling dirt, etc. I saw men playing majong! I asked around TLG driver about this, and he replied that "Naxi women are physically stronger than men!" haha, yeah right. More like the men are l-a-z-y! :) Anyway, I finished ... read more

One of Yunnan's most popular adventures is trekking the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan (云南). It's a two day trek through a very large, deep gorge. I've seen photos of the hike and wasn't thoroughly impressed, but it's more for the experience than the scenery. I was planning to skip the Gorge all together, but since I was already in Lijiang, I decided to just go. I told one of the girls at the hotel that I wanted to go to TLG and asked if she could recommend a driver to me. She suggested that I team up with some other guests in the hotel to hire a car together. TLG is about two hours North of Lijiang and it costs Y280 for a car for the day. I ended up chatting with a young guy ... read more

In Lijiang, Yunnan Province today! I left Dali today, hoping I could catch a dry day in Lijiang. It's supposed to rain in Lijiang for the rest of the week as well. The rain is miserable! I got some clothes laundered in Dali, and I went to pick them up this morning.... and you've guessed it! They lost my jeans and shirt. Considering I only have two pairs of pants and three long sleeved tshirts, I was pretty annoyed. Grrr... I'll go back to Dali at the end of the week and maybe they'll find them. Stuff like this happens, but I'm just bummed since I only have one pair of pants and if they get wet I'm stuck with soggy pants. Yuk. So Lijiang is quite nice. Very touristy, but the Old Town is completely ... read more