Dali - Cannabis, Horses and Beckham

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Dali in a nutshell

We got off to a bad start when we jumped off the bus a couple of stops early and we ended up in the middle of nowhere, hoping to establish from our rubbish map how to get to to our guest house. After trying to find somebody who spoke English to no avail we almost had given up when luckily a random passer by in a mini van full of water bottles stopped. The friendly guy must have felt sorry for us as he rearranged his water bottles and drove us straight to the door of our guest house. Nice.

Dali old town is situated next to a 7km lake with a backdrop of the mountains. It's lovely even if the main tourist street is not what we expected; If it wasn't for the great mountain scenery we could have easily been on Thailand's 'Khoa San Road' with a bizzare mix of 'Amsterdam style' cafes. Again not what we had expected of communist China!

While eating some tourist food 😊 we had a few funny look-a-like comments from the locals... Alan was told by the same guy he looked like David Beckham, Pierce Brosman and Tom Cruise! (Alan completely agreed) I personally think the guy must have been smoking way to much of the cannabis which seems so freely available, with every other non tourist trying
to flog us some! (Don't worry Mum I didn't have any!)

We arranged to do a trek the following day in the mountains, the first bit by horse followed by 11km walk. I successfully helped Alan overcome his childhood fear of horses; born from an incident when a horse failed to recognise the difference between Alan's hair and hay!

We were up bright and early for the trek and were met by the Chinese version of Clint Eastwood. The language barrier made navigating a little more interesting with neither the guide nor the horses understanding a word of English which made the conversation amusing to say the least. When we reached the top I felt sorry for my horse... it wasn't the biggest and it was obvious the poor beast was struggling from caring my fat ass up the mountain. We left the horses and made the rest of the way by foot.

Despite it being the 'wet season' in the south of China, Yunnan province has been dry for over three months which disappointingly resulted in the much hyped lush waterfalls we had seen in the brochure diminishing to nothing more than a dribble with a ice cold paddling pool!

The 11km walk was pleasant and offered some great views of the lake and surrounding area, if it wasn't for the views the 11km hike would not have been worth it as the 'five sites' were a bit of a let down. We took a cable car back down the mountain, packed our bags and jumped on a bus heading to Lijiang.

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