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....
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