Lijiang: Venice meets traditional China

Gorgeous photos
Thanks Ren. Your post also made me smile as that culture shock already happened yesterday arriving in New York City. As the train pulled in I built myself up ready to get on, pushing myself forward as the doors opened. When I looked around, everyone else was waiting for the other passagers to get off looking at me like I had no manners. I was soo embarrassed. Cannot believe how quickly I learnt such behaviour. I blame both China and India, getting on and off those trains. If you didnt push you would't get off. ?

flying vs train
C TRIP was certainly the way to go to check flights and trains. We relied on it although opted to book trains at the stations due to the added fees and charges if we cancelled. Despite it being affordable for the flight we paid around 80 dollars for the train. Not quite half but close to half the cost of the flight. Plus we figured we needed to relax after Bejing and so even if we did catch the flight we would have most likely spent a day in a hotel anyway so figured it would save us money for 2 nights of accomadation and give us the time we needed to put our feet up. We were shattered from the great wall alone and really enjoy the scenic train rides so it wasn't even a challenge. Any other country and it may have been. Think it did the job as when we eventually reached Lijiang 2 days later we were able to explore easily enough.? Sounds strange but it did make sense at the time.

Lijiang
Thanks for your comment Anna. Reading your post made me smile also as it brought back happy memories for us. We loved the squares where they danced and still can recall the drummers song without any thought ?. Lijiang was very atmospheric. We doubt that apart from on here we will get opportunities to share such feelings/experiences about travelling through China. Happy you enjoyed it as much as us. Thinking about China as I continue to travel, it really stands out to me as a great place. Will certainly be going back. Couldn't help but laugh at the lack of consideration in allowing you to pay the ticket and failing to inform you the water had dryed out. Going the back route definately added a bit of adventure to the lake area. Although saying that I actually enjoyed the lake area far more than Chris (who wrote the above) so would say its worth visiting with water present if you go lijiang again.

Lijiang
Thanks for your comment Anna. Reading your post made me smile also as it brought back happy memories for us. We loved the squares where they danced and still can recall the drummers song without any thought ?. Lijiang was very atmospheric. We doubt that apart from on here we will get opportunities to share such feelings/experiences about travelling through China. Happy you enjoyed it as much as us. Thinking about China as I continue to travel, it really stands out to me as a great place. Will certainly be going back. Couldn't help but laugh at the lack of consideration in allowing you to pay the ticket and failing to inform you the water had dryed out. Going the back route definately added a bit of adventure to the lake area. Although saying that I actually enjoyed the lake area far more than Chris (who wrote the above) so would say its worth visiting with water present if you go lijiang again.

Lijiang
Yes, you are right. We didn't travel all that way for Lijiang only.. although the next stop was unfortunately the last stop for us in China. Definately a highlight for us though. Thanks for your comment about the places we visited. When speaking to other travellers in China many people opted to focus on one province even of it was their first time. For us travelling to China we had many places that we very excited about and could not just miss and so made it a plan to visit all these places despite the cost implication of travelling across country. We could have always extended but we didnt want to sacrifice another country. Looking back I do wish we would have done so as we just loved China.