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Visiting Dali was not on the itinery to Beijing. Thanks go to Paddy because it was a great stop!
Dali is a small, ancient, walled city. Entering through the impressively imposing (I'm running out of adjectives to describe how nice China is) South gate, our first sight was the heaving throngs of Chinese tourists. It may be low season here but that does not seem to go for the Chinese, who arrive en mass, all sporting matching baseball caps being led by a tour guide dressed in local traditional Bai dress carrying a flag (and we thought it was Americans who had the monopoly on cheese!). I guess with a population of 700 million the difference between low season and high season does not appear obvious to us Brits. The streets are teaming with tourists, souvenir shops and people offering any kind of service you could need (kung fu lessons, chess lessons, dodgy meat, Lara had her shoe repaired...the list goes on and on).
So we wandered along the walls and the town in one morning (it's only tiny). The place is cool. The old gents wear flat caps and navy blue chinese collars and congregate around outdoor tables
playing cards and dominoes and chess. That is those who are not babysitting...Yep, in China its a mans job to walk around the streets with babies strapped to their backs. It is like the original Athena Poster (although they are rather elderley and certainly not topless). The cobbled streets are gorgeous, and everything you can imagine a Chinese building to be....ancient , colourful and lanterns adorn the curly-eved roofs. We took a chairlift up to the Zhonge Peak on the Can Shan mountain ranges which was not as scary as Lara had feared. Despite numerouse excuses ranging from the wind to it being too cold to the cable snapping Andrew dragged her up there and even persuaded her to walk around the edge of the mountain. It was fairly hazy but gave us a good enugh view out to the lake and of the ancient pagodas dotted around the town.
The next day after a toasty evening in beds with electric blankets (and who said hostels in China were nasty!) we took to 2 wheels again (which are definietly more fun) and cycled accross Er Hai lake (with the help of a boat) to the Wasa village. Cycling away
from the millions of Chinese tourists was great and it is always good to people watch in these tiny villages where tourism has not impacted upon them at all. What was not so nice on the way back however was to learn that the chinese are not scared of their children just pooing away wherever and whenever . In fact loads of babies do not have backs to their trousers - just holes so they can go whenever and wherever - weird. Anyway, we are sitting nicely watching out the window and we almost got hit by a baby projectile pooing. The parents certainly were not shy, even spreading his legs to shoot it out. Something we are very quickly learning about the chinese culture is that manners do not always feature and what would be considered as the height of rudeness is fairly normal here. Dont even get us started on the spitting.......
The weather was a wee bit odd in Dali though and on leaving we are both sporting a rather nice pair of panda eyes. First we are freezing and need all our clothes and then we get sunburned...What is it with this place!
So
Dali was picture perfect and apparently this is just a taste for our next stop - Lijiang.
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