Dali

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Day 1 & 2

After the horrible 5 squashed trip from Kunming we finally arrived in outer Dali, not old city Dali like we thought, so we caught a taxi to the hostel which was great value for money except that the hot showers weren't working. So the next day we recieved a refreashing cold shower, but it was good because the weather was extremely hot and it looked like a sweaty day ahead of us. We walked straight out of the hostel into old town Dali, which was busy with Chinese tourists everywhere. Inside the town walls it had been converted into a tourist market. All of the traditional shops were now gift shops and there were westerners everywhere. Don't think I had seen so many westerners in China at one place.

After leaving the old town we walked up to the famous three pagodas, but we were smart stocking up on fruit before entering the monuments. When we were walking we accidently went through the wrong entrance but this was a bonus because the guards didn't speak English so we got into concession prices instead of the full cost price, we later entered the correct way and it was amazing! For some reason there were hardly no tourists anywhere inside. We decided to stop and have a bit to eat before entering the first of many temples. By accident we walked off the path and met local Dai women eating infront of there monstary and they invited us to eat with them and fed us strange coloured food. After the delicious feast, we went back onto the path and looked at the pagodas from all the different angles. It was great to see but the highlight was feeding the masses of fish infront of the temples. There were thousands of fish and they almost jumped into our hands when we were feeding them. We continued to look at the various and then realised that we had been there for 6 hours! So we thought we might go and grab some dinner. After dinner we met some English tourists who had also been teaching in China, but in the smokey Beijing. After chatting we all went to bed because tomorrow we had decided would be a bike riding day.

Day 3

We woke up reasonably early and hired some bikes so we could leave the touristy shops of Dali and head to the outskirts to see the locals of Dali. We rode around the rice paddy fields, through the traditional old towns. The roads were very narrow and annoying to steer around. We ended up eating a light lunch infront of an ancient temple, which was great because it was in its traditional state and hadn't been fixed for tourists. We met some of the locals and then road back around the irrigation area, where Hannah ended up falling into the ditch. The funniest thing I think I had ever seen in all my travels so far. It was a full on stack and instead of helping her the three of us just got our cameras out... of course we did help her get out in the end, but she had to ride back through the tourist district all muddy and wet. We eventually left the old town and returned the bikes, had a shower (Hannah) and then went into the old town again for a western meal. Mexican was on the menu, strange the things you can find to eat in China.
The next day we decided we would go up to Lijiang and try out the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

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Photos

Feeding the Fish
Feeding the fish at the Three Pagodas

Eating Lunch at the Pagodas
Lunch time at the Pagodas

The rice fields
Where we took a bike ride