Day 26: Dali

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Dali was a nice little town, and a good way to break up the trip between Lijiang and Kunming. It is a little like Lijiang, in that some streets are closed off to cars, and are lined with touristy shops. But unlike lijiang it is layed out in the familiar square shape of many chinese cities, with a surrounding city wall, and straight streets that are easy to navigate.

The first day in dali, we took a chairlift up the mountains that loom up on the west side of town. It is then a 12 km walk to another chairlift back down. The walk takes a while, but it is flat - much different from tiger leaping gorge. But the scenery is very nice - steep mountains, good view of dali and the lake, with some waterfalls mixed in. Definitely a must do activity if you are in dali.

We stayed at the sleepyfish hostel, which is run by a very helpful and friendly english speaking staff. It is the first place weve stayed so far with a native english speaker (the host is from the UK) so it was nice to have some real conversations. Wed highly recommend the sleepyfish when in dali.

The food was good, too. There is a street called "foreigner street" which is lined with restaurants and bars with english menus. Stephanie was able to eat breakfast for every meal, while I stuck mainly with chinese.

The second day I rented a bike and cruised down to the lake while steph stayed in dali. It is a nice ride, passing by many farms. I found a trail that went along the lake and followed it for a bit, went through a village and got a lot of weird looks from the local farmers, and then headed back to town. We also did trip to dali city, which is about 15 km from the old town, mainly to go to walmart for supplies. It was kind of a let down though. Walmart in china is just not the same as in the usa.

I guess thats all to say about dali. We were only there two days. I think if we hadn spent so much time in lijiang we wouldve stayed much longer, as it is a nice town to unwind, but we decided to pick up the pace so we could head towards kunming, then yangshou.

Heres some pictures from the hill

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