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Published: June 16th 2007
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Dali1
Sunset by the lake I am writing from a town I didn't really think I would ever go, just something I had read about back in the states and circled it on our map of China. Now we are here and it is really nice. I had read it was a nice laid-back city with beautiful senery. But when we arrived after a four hour bus ride, my ideas shattered.
It turns out that their is a New Dali and an Old Town Dali. New Dali is where our bus dropped us of and it is a busy city, with taxi's, lots of people, and pretty dirty as lots of cities are. We were quite upset. We decided to save the trouble of finding out hostel by just getting a taxi; not a great decision.
The taxi driver would not give us a price, he would just say "Metor! Metor!" over and over again untill we finnaly got in. It took us quite a while to get there, and I was watching the 'metor' click up a couple Yuan every minute. It soon got to just over 40 Yuan, and we saw the sign for our hostel: DragonFly Garden. It looked like
Dali5
Some would call me crazy, others just having a good time a nice place but our entrance was very different than most.
After Randy paid the man, and we had got our bags out of the back, the Taxi Driver began to scream and point at a bill Randy had given him (China has a little bit of a epidemic with fake notes). When he showed us the note we could tell it was not the one we had given him and knew he was trying to scam us. We laughed while he frantically tried to get one of us to take it back, but we were not about too.
We walked passed him and into the entrance, all the time being pulled on and shouted at. Their were lots of people outside enjoying the atmosphere and they were taken back by all the yeiling. The owner soon came over and asked what was going on. After a short explanation he began telling the driver to get lost. He didn't take littly to this and started yeiling loudly and tried to take our bags.
Randy got very upset but stayed incrontrol. It was a sight to see for sure. The part I am most sad about is the
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Neat pic from the National Park fact that I missed one of the Resturant owners next to the hostel kick the driver in the butt. I guess that was the end of it and the driver went on his way. I don't want to even think about how badly that man is going to try and srew the next tourist that comes his way; I just hope they have some help like we did.
After two days in this little town I find myself again wanting to get out ASAP. It is sad in a way, but we have so much to see and so little time. We are always questioned by other travlers why we travel the way we we do. "How can you do that? I spend six months in a place and feel like I have yet to scratch the surface of their culture." I love asking these types of travlers what "Cultur" is. They always think of creative answers. "Cultur is sitting down and playing games with two old women on a side street, where no other tourists go." One man said to me. I addmitted that was very cool, and I would like to do the same.
I have
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At the bottom of the moutain had experiances like this. And I really like them. But I want to see the world, I want to see the tourist sites and decide for myself what is better. I don't care if they have spent the last three years hitch-hiking trough China, I wish I could do that, but at this moment in time I want to see the big sites, I want to see the big things, I want to see it all. Thats why we came to this little town (that and we couldn't get a train to anywhere else). I wanted to experiance this 'cultur,' but what I have found is that these travlers spend most their days in the hostel drinking, smoking, and talking to other travlers.
It's funny really. Randy and I agree that it is preception and that these people want to experiance the cultur they enjoy but just in a different place with different people. Maybe its so they don't ever have to really ever get to know a person, or themselves for that matter. But whatever, I think they are great for doing it, and I would like to do it one day myself; but not today, and not
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The highest tourists go... we are Not tourists tomorrow. One day.
I guess we are going to stay here one more night, the hostel is having a big party so it might just be fun. I don't know where we are going, but the ideal for me would be to get a plane up to Bejing. I really don't want to spend three days on a train to get there. I am really thinking about just heading north west by bus and getting to Lhasa (Tibet) that way. But again, that takes four days or more, and that just doesn't sound great.
Yesterday we hiked one of the local moutains that surround the valley and lake that is Old Dali. It was really fun. The lake is just at 6000 ft and we hiked to just over 9000. most of it was up a river beacuse the little trail dissapeard into after a little while. We had a blast, hiking up waterfalls, huge jungle terrain, and running into abbandoned patches of matted veggitation, that could have been from wild beast of local hunters I'm not really sure. I will try to put up some pictures so you can see how great it was. But I don't
Dali6
This is the trail we followed want the people close to Randy thinking he is doing dangerous things. I will keep him safe...
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