China - Shangri-La

After 8 hours, 3 car accidents, and 2 stops for strawberries, we finally arrived in Shangri-la....and my god, it was freezing!

As I have mentioned before, I was currently going through the worst weather of the trip so far with it being quite a bit cooler than Laos and getting the odd spot of rain. Shangri-la however was around 3700 meters above sea level around surrounded by snowcapped mountains, thus making it icy cold (around 5C - 10C degrees). So it was lucky I hit up those fake outdoor gear shops in Dali, as my snow jackets came in more than handy...!

Sahngri-la as a town was quite small, with hardly any tourists. It was a really nice mix of Tibetan and Chinese culture as it was not far from the Tibetan border.



We spent our first day wandering around the town and had a look at one of the monasteries in town. This monastery would have had over 1000 prayer flags throughout the complex in all kinds of different colours, it looked amazing. It also had a giant prayer wheel in the middle overlooking the town, which the locals would climb up to and spin around for good luck.



The evening we caught up with some people Sarah had met along her travels, and had dinner and a few beers with them. We ended up going to a small tibetan bar where we ended up singing along with some guys for most of the night!

On our second day we headed to the Monastery just outside of town. Half falling down and half being rebuilt, this Monastery would have to be one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. The Monastery is home to over 700 monks, whose age ranges from 7 years old to 90. As you walk through the monastery you see the monks doing everyday things like building, cleaning, and chatting on there cell phones.

The colours on the outside of the buildings and temples within the complex were a brilliant yellow and maroon, which matched the Monks robes. We spent around 4 hours just walking around the place exploring the different temples.


The following day we headed to Lijiang....

China - Dali

After travelling so much on buses throughout South East Asia, I was rather excited to find out I could catch a train from Kunming to Dali. I automatically presumed it would be faster aswell.

I need to learn not to presume things!!!

The train took 9 hours, which at first was fine. Until I was informed by a guy sitting next to me that the bus only took 4 hours...but the train was more scenic...! I think I would have prefered a 4 hour boring journey to a 9 hour over crowded yet scenic train trip....!

On arriving in Dali, I automatically fell in love with the place. This was the China I had come to see. Dali is a tiny town, with a small population of around 40,000. The town its self you could walk around in half a day, and were all traditional chinese buildings and cobblestone streets. The only thing that was slightly out of place were the minority women, around 80 years old, trying to sell you dope and opium as you passed by the Tibetan Cafe...!

At the hostel I stayed at (The Jade Emu), I met up with Sarah and Andres, who I hung out with the whole time I was in Dali. Sarah as it turned out was heading in the same direction as me, so we decided to stick together through the next couple of weeks.

On my second day in Dali, Sarah Andres and myself headed up one of the Jade Mountains that surround Dali. ALthough you can hike it, we took the easy way of a cable car to the top. From the top you could see for miles and the view was stunning. Like I said before, Dali was really my first proper "China" experience, and from the top of these mountains you got a real taste for the beautiful lanscapes that China has to offer; from the way the montains surrounded the lake, to the hundreds of rice fields that appeared painted on the horizon.

The following day we decided to go cycling, which really was quite a dumb idea considering Andreas was cycling around the WHOLE of asia, and was therefore quite fit. He decided we would do an easy 25klm ride (!!!!) to the port of the lake.

The ride was actually quite easy, but the roads were bad bad bad, which made riding slightly more difficult than orignally anticipated....! However, the views while we rode were just about worth the pain my arse went through on those bumpy roads. We rode past a whole bunch of rice fields and farms where there were Chinese working in all there tradational minority clothing, and through a couple of little villages aswell.

It took around 2 and a half hours to get to the lakes edge, so suffice to say we were all completely stuffed by the time we got there. After a small rest, we went in search of a toilet and food. The toilet we found first, which was probably a good thing, as had we found it after eating, we probably would have vommitted our whole meal up. This public toilet was quite possibly the worse public toilet I have ever seen in my whole life. It was as open as every other chinese public toilet (ie: no doors), but this one obviously was completely blocked, due to the smell that almost made you fall backwards as you walked towards the front door. Unfortunately, it appears a few people had "missed" while doing there "buisiness" and this was the result:

Lovely isn't it??

Then came the food search. We couldn't find any obvious food stalls or restaurants anywhere, but we did come across a youth hostel on the street leading to the port. We walked in there, and after finding aboslutely no body spoke a word of english, we mimed the actions to eating to which the guy at reception nodded furiously and led us into the back of the hostel. After walking for about 10 meters, he led the three of us into the kitchen where we basically just pointed at things that we liked and the chef gathered them up.

We ended up turning this:

Into this:

And in doing so, quite possibly ate the greatest meal I have ever tasted in my life, for a total of $5 per person!

After we finished eating we grabbed our bikes to head back to Dali. However, I so tired and really didn't want to ride all the way back....so I took a tuk tuk back! Lazy person that I am...however in saying that I don't know how many of you reading this could honestly be arsed cycling for 55k's in one day??? Honestly???

The next few days were spent generally chilling out at the hostel, and enjoying Dali's knock off versions of North Face and Columbia jacket shopping for less that $20AUD.....!

From Dali, me and Sarah then headed to Shangri-la....

China - Kunming

I left Laos at 2.30pm on the 26th of April, with China Eastern Airlines to Kunming. The first thing I noticed was that I was the only western person on the flight. Now, the plane was pretty small, however this was the first time in 2 months that this had happened. It was amusing as the flight attendant said all the announcements in Chinese, and then in very broken English, which I'm sure was only really for my benefit....!


Arriving at Kunming, I was then the only western person in the airport! The customs police gave me an awfully funny look as I handed over my passport aswell. I was beggining to realise that this end of China was obviously quite untouched by tourists, which would be a bit of a change after travelling through western tourist invaded Vietnam Cambodia and Laos.


After an early night, I woke up at 8ish the next morning, and decided to go for a bit of a walk around town. A bit of a walk around town turned into 5 hours of getting completely lost and walking hopelessly around the back streets of Kunming trying to find my way back to my hostel! Every single street sign except maybe 2 or 3 are in Chinese, nothing in English. Also, no one speaks English, which was a massive suprise as I thought, quite ignorantly, that China would be the opposite to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. But its not, which makes for some quite amusing situations!

The following day I managed to do the exact same thing again....!

Kunming as a city is probably a good intro into China for someone who hasn't been there before...but it is mainly a buisness town with not a hell of alot to do.

The following day, I headed to Dali...

Laos - Luang Prabang

So after an eventuful two days riding Elephants and Trekking, I decided a couple of days of chilling out were in order....which considering I was in the most relaxed country in the world, quite an easy thing to achieve!

I saw Ville off to the airport the day after we arrived back from the trek. It was sad to say good bye as we had such a cool time for 2 weeks, but I will be catching up with him when I get to Helsinki which will be fantastic.

So I literally did just do nothing for a couple of days. I did climb to the top of Wat Phu Si, which had a fanastic view of Luang Prabang. I also went for a trip out to the water falls, which were very pretty to look at. But thats about it!

What I did see though was some of the most crazy rain storms I have ever seen! One night I was eating dinner and chatting to a french guy called Piere, and all of the sudden out of no where, the rain came down...and didn't stop for 2 days! It was insane! However, for nearly 2 months I had seen next to no rain and had brilliant weather, so it was nice for a change.

All up I spent a total of 6 days in Luang Prabang, and loved every second of it. Such a stunning town to look at, and a very easy place to just sit back and watch the world go by.

On the 25th, I headed back down to Vientiane, where on the 26th, I headed to country # 4...China!!