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it is time to visit the kunming bus station again for our trip to the rice terraces, and although i had hoped to arrive at the bus with a note from the hostel to help us to board our bus without the difficulties we encountered last time, they weren't very sympathetic to the problem and wrote a basic 'where is my bus' note for me in chinese that didn't really convey the issues we were hoping to avoid. armed with this note and some thoughts as to how to handle another situation should it arise, we depart.
the usual bustle as you leave the taxi ensues, and after saying many ' bu yao's' to the solicitations outside, we enter the bus station. stephen inquires about our bus, gets directed outside, and my hopes that this gentleman only works at night for the sleeper buses to lijiang are quickly dashed, he is standing at the entrance to the bus to yuanyang with another man. i put up my hand to him in a very 'i'm not dealing with you' gesture, and stephen bypasses him to hand our tickets over to the second gentleman. we make it on to the bus and in to our seats, most likely without being accosted just yet as we have left our large packs at cloudland and have only our small packs with us this time. the bus fills up, and eventually this man comes on board to (of all things) hand out flyers to the foreigners on board for a hotel at the rice terraces. he abruptly says to stephen at this point 'japan!', to which stephen replies 'canadian' and brushes him off. the bus leaves shortly after, and it seems we have managed to avoid an encounter this time.
we quickly strike up conversation with another group of tourists traveling together to the rice terraces, and we discover why we weren't hassled, they were. there are six of them, some with fairly large packs, and our 'friend' tried to aggressively solicit money from them. luckily, two of them spoke pretty good mandarin, and as we discover, they all live in hong kong/shen zen, so are a bit more savy on the ins and outs of travel in china. in the end, only one of them paid, and it was a small amount, maybe 10-20 yuan. we explain our previous encounter to them, and all of us are fairly certain this is a huge scam. after our first stop a couple of hours later, the group tells us that they were talking to the bus driver outside, and he told them that the guy was not legit, and that they should report him. our suspicions are confirmed! round two over, we put it out of mind and are anticipating our arrival in xin jie. a bit more successful than last time!
returning to kunming. a bit of a welcome moment, having finally left dali, but also overwhelming, the big city again after 3 weeks away from one! we return to cloudland though, and spend our two days relaxing, eating far too many meals in the convenient and super friendly guesthouse restaurant, catching up and planning the next part of our travels. a visit to another guesthouse, we bump in to aviv briefly, a fellow traveler we met in chengdu. other than that, we do nothing except get supplies for our next bus ride, hang out in cloudland, and plan our travels to yuangyang rice terraces, something that proves a bit challenging! (no one can clearly tell us how to get there, the info in our guide and online is vague at best). we'll see what ensues, round two at the kunming bus station, and our attempt to reach the city of xin jie!
i am writing this months later, and feel so removed from our time in dali that i think this will end up a very short, succinct entry. dali. a small town, easy to navigate, easy to linger too long in, somewhere we didn't end up doing the things that maybe we should have. we arrive from shaxi, and get to our guesthouse relatively easily, and after settling in to our room, we wander in search of food. dali is split up in to the old town and new town, we find ourselves in old town, and it is quite small and easy to walk around, so searching for one of my 'ever elusive' vegetarian restaurants proves quite easy here. after a nice meal, we wander to the west gate in time for sunset, then we wander south, and reach the south gate all lit up at night, so have seen the east, west and south gates already in our first few hours here. after dinner, some random wandering. we stumble across a square where a performance of traditional instruments is about to take place, and we are among few who stay to watch the whole thing. in all, our first night here the vibe seems pretty chilled, and like a good place to unwind from the intense experiences of the past two weeks.
the next day is much the same, aimless wandering through the old town, eating, chilling out. we visit the north gate today, and now have been to the four cardinal points of the old town. not much to say, it is nice here, but not as alluring as the two previous places we have been. for some reason we are unmotivated to make it out to erhai lake today, one of the main attractions of dali, the other being cangshan mountain. details and days blend a bit, and the events that ensue are a bit hard to seperate. first disappointment seems trivial, but it actually ends up absorbing alot of our time. long story short, this turns out to be the most difficult, and expensive, city yet to get our laundry done in. i end up at a guesthouse on the other end of the old town where i am charged 3X as much as we have been paying elsewhere in china to do our laundry. there are two pluses to this though, we bump in to angela (from shaxi) at the guesthouse the first day when i am inquiring whether or not i can bring my laundry here to have it washed, and when i go to pick it up the next afternoon, i run in to mei from panba guesthouse who is in dali for the afternoon from lijiang! days spent wandering the old town snapping photos, catching sunset, eating.
at some point, stephen gets sick, not sure if it's food related, but after a night of visits to the bathroom, the next day is spent entirely in bed recovering. at some point also, we have changed rooms in our guesthouse, from a very large airy room with lots of windows, to the nice enough but smaller room that doesn't compare where we find ourselves when stephen gets sick. he recovers slowly, only to have it hit me two days later. the same story unfolds for me, but somehow inbetween the two events we make it up to cangshan mountain for the afternoon. it begins as a lovely respite from the city, the air is cool and clean, the view lovely, the quiet and isolation peaceful, but for some reason my mood shifts and the day ends on a bit of a lower note. nice enough afternoon though overall with a spectacular cable car ride up and down the mountain, and a really needed break from the old town which is wearing thin for me.
in all of our wanderings we travel back and forth on ren min lu many times a day. our hotel is at one end of this street, the restaurants at the other. this is the part of dali that wears on me the most, each day i am progressively exposed to more and more sights that i wish i had never had to witness. as in most of china, this road is lined with restaurants which display their meat in the form of raw animal carcasses hanging from the front. i have come to learn to accept this as part of our travels, but avert my eyes and avoid it in any way possible, something a bit difficult in this narrow lane. what i hadn't learned yet, and quickly figure out, is that these animals are freshly processed daily, and if you get up early enough in the morning, it is happening right in front of the establishments in question. this began with me seeing slumped animal hides, ears, hooves and all, from the freshly skinned animals, just laying on the ground, just tossed aside. it made me sick to see, and after a short walk, i start using my umbrella as a shield to block my view. i had already begun to try walking a different route as well, but i hadn't fully learned my lesson yet when on one of our last days here i glance up quickly to witness (for 1 second) a stage of processing the animals that i will not describe and i have tried very hard to erase from my memory since. it was the final thing for me, after being worn down by this day by day, i am ready to leave dali.
in hindsight, we should have probably stayed on the mountain, or on the lake, somewhere we didn't even end up seeing! but we didn't know what to expect upon arrival, and getting sick sort of made it difficult to move locations, both physically, and on a motivational level. in it's defense, we visited dali after lijiang and shaxi, two places where our experiences were exceptional, so it had alot to live up to, it is not hard to see why it fell short. neither one of us would suggest that it is not worth a visit, but for us, it did not sit well, and we wish we hadn't lingered so long. under different circumstances we may have seen more of the beauty of dali, but for now, it remains a bit of a disappointing experience for us, not one that we regret, but one we wish we could have experienced differently.
meant to write this week's ago, but it is happening now, so we'll see what comes out........
shaxi valley was once a significant trading post along the old tea and horse caravan trail, which linked southern china (yunnan and sichuan), to tibet and through the himilayas to nepal and india. sideng village has the only surviving market from this once historic trail. read more about the conservation and sustainable development of the shaxi rehabilitation project.
day 1.
we leave lijiang on what is a lovely afternoon, and find ourselves on a local bus to jianchuan with ron. it is a small bus, with people and items packed in on a winding road that leads down into shaxi valley over the next 3 or so hours. i have discovered that it is best if i don't look out the window at our surroundings if i want to avoid feeling nauseous for the whole ride, but i can't help but peek every so often at the stunning landscape that i am spying out the front window for more detail. we stop often along the way to drop people off or pick them up on the side of the road, their belongings strewn about the bus or thrown on to the rooftop. some truly stunning passengers get on part way, very dramatic local attire, faces full of character. unsure at many points if we are on the right bus, we do arrive at jianchuan as hoped, and are directed easily to the minivans that will take us the remainder of the trip on to sideng village, our destination. stephen, ron and i are put in the back seat, and i manage the 45 minutes to our final stop by resting my head on stephen's shoulder and looking straight ahead, the lady in the seat in front of us doesn't fare as well. we arrive in the village late in the day, not sure where to go to find our guesthouse from here. we find our way to the square which is the direction point to our accomodation, but somehow miss the turn off. stephen thankfully still has minutes on his mobile, and after a quick call, someone comes to greet us in less than a minute. he takes us down the lane to the shaxi cultural center, the place we have booked for our first night here. we are it's only guests, and are shown to our rooms to settle in. they are simple, but lovely rooms, with nice details, and very stylish bathrooms. we all freshen up and decide to walk around for a bit before sunset. it is small here, and has a wonderful feel. we catch sunset over the hui river, and decide to find some food. stephen and ron end up at a little shop for bowls of spicy noodles, i decide to use the kitchen at the cultural center later on to make myself dinner. i am pretty excited, it has been since our early time in chengdu that i have had the opportunity to cook myself food, and the guesthouse has told me i can just use their vegetables and rice to cook with! on our way back, stephen spots a little place lit up that we peek into and spot the only other foreigners we had seen in town earlier upon our arrival. bert and rachel invite us to join them for tea, and we enjoy some good conversation before my hunger takes over and i excuse myself to go cook my dinner. it is an early evening after a lovely day of travel and wandering with ron. i think we are all enamored with this place.
day 2.
asked the night before what time we want our breakfast at, we had decided on 10 am. having told them of my diet, we were told last night that they were soaking beans to make something for me for breakfast, little did i realize it was freshly made soymilk! and warmed too! ron and stephen get warmed cow's milk this first morning, and we all share some very yummy vegan pancakes made with what i think is sweet potato (they are a natural looking orange!). after some confusion over whether we are getting more food for breakfast, we linger awhile until we realize that we aren't, and decide to head out and start our day. we are contemplating moving guesthouses, as ours is a little expensive (relative to the part of the world we are in...), and we are it's only occupants, but decide to spend another night (the kitchen and soymilk a big draw!).
we wander back behind the village again and over the river through some fields. it is sunny and vibrant, both in colour and local activity, we take our time wandering directionless and enjoying the scenery. many photos later we make our way back into the village and to lunch. we stop at another guesthouse, ou yang, the one that bert and rachel are staying at, and stephen and ron ask if they are serving food. told to wait for half an hour, we have tea and browse some fascinating books on the local history and environment until lunch is ready. having no idea what they were going to get, ron and stephen enjoy a really nice meal and some socializing with the owners. we wander the other way through the village in the afternoon, and out on to the main street for a bit. it is a slow day, and we are all just enjoying our surroundings and the pace of this tiny village. stephen and ron decide on another hotel's restaurant for dinner, i have decided to take advantage of the kitchen once again at our guesthouse and make my own. i meet them after, to discover the lovely restaurant at lamodian, and meet some other foreigners who are here from xizhou where they live and work now. afterward, the three of us head to another bar for a drink, and have an early night again. a day well spent!
day 3.
this morning is sunny again, and we enjoy our pancakes and soymilk for each of us today before deciding we would like to move to another guesthouse, no. 58 guesthouse and café, the place where we had tea the first night. we will be saving quite a bit sharing a room with the three of us, and the owner is a lovely woman named jackie who left her life in taiwan to start up a guesthouse here with a business partner. her place is also lovely, and we hear quite a bit about how it all came about. another late start to our day, by the time we settle in to our new location, it is time for lunch again. i have been eating leftovers from my dinners the night before, so stephen and ron return to ou yang for another enjoyable meal. we have been consciously 'spreading' our spending around and trying to support each of the local establishments in some way. everyone we are encountering here are really friendly, and genuinely happy when we frequent their place. after lunch, the three of us head out of the village to try and find a trail into shibao shan that jackie has told us about. it is an interesting adventure along the main road to another nearby village, through some rice fields, first followed by a charming group of four children calling out 'hello' and giggling as they inch closer to us, then later being led by them through the fields to the trail. unfortunately when we get to the trail there is a sign warning against taking it as a part of it has been washed out, so we make our way to that point and have to turn back. we realized out trip through the village earlier was not the way we had been directed to go, but are happy for the error and having had the opportunity to meet the children and wander through the fields. we take the other way back as it is an easier walk, and some new scenery! we are having dinner with the 'family' at our guesthouse, and head back in time to join in. the meal is fantastic, shared with jackie, her helper and another guest. just as we are finishing up, a man comes in to the bar in the front part of the guesthouse and peeks around the curtain dividing it from the dining room. it is gordon and sue, arrived here from lijiang to meet us! we had thought at this point they weren't coming, and find out that they had never received our message to them from panba, but came anyway, and spotted us in a quick glimpse as the curtain moved! they sit out front and wait for us to finish eating so that we may join them for a drink. can't remember at what point naomi and angela had come in, but we are all sitting around jackie's having drinks when bert and rachel come in also, and i think we are now offically all of the foreigner's in sideng gathered together in this one place! there is animated conversation, and probably our latest night here so far before we all part ways and try and get some rest before the big event here in shaxi tomorrow, the local market.
day 4.
market day, really the reason many have come, definitely a highlight of the trip here we didn't want to miss. it is held up on the main street now, as it is quite extensive and too big for the square where it used to be held. the reason many travel here for the market? many from the surrounding hill tribes make their way in to town to sell their goods here. it is bustling and lively, and definetely not a 'tourist' market, but one the locals rely on to get there supplies. there are separate areas through the town, the first we come across is the dried goods. legumes, rice, corn kernels, staples. we wander up the street where many are selling cooked food, dried spices, some fruit and smelly tofu (really, that's what it is called, deservedly when cooked!). we decide to wander down to the end of the market first, where there is supposed to be livestock for sale. i hold back once in the area, ron and stephen go to check it out. we wander back in to town, and make our way to the produce area where of course we buy some fruit and take some photos. then we check out the clothing area, which is for some reason followed by the meat area, so i again turn back, and plant myself on the main road to snap some photos. once ron and stephen meet me, we wander slowly back to our starting point, and head to lunch. lamodian again, this time i eat too.
after lunch, we each do our own thing, i am so tired i take a nap, ron chats with jackie, and stephen wanders back out to catch the mass exodus of market goers. he then follows a narrow trail through fields, taking him to another nearby village about 45 minutes away, before finally deciding to turn back. dinner again with the family that night, then drinks at jackie's and after, across the square. stephen and i retire early while ron, gordon, sue and naomi head off to a third place for another drink! it has been another beautifully sunny day here, followed by a cold night, which is normal this time of year in this part of china. stephen and i have decided to head out tomorrow morning for dali, but ron will be staying on for a bit (it turns out a long time!). we will meet gordon and sue in the morning and share a ride in to jianchuan to make our seperate ways from there.
day 5.
our last breakfast here in sideng, we say goodbye to jackie, her helper and ron and make our way to the main road with gordon and sue. what is to be the most nauseating ride for me so far in our travels ensues, and i actually have to get the driver to stop part way so that my head will stop reeling and because i thought i was actually going to throw up. the fresh air revives me a bit, i change seats for the remainder of the ride and make it to jianchuan. gordon and sue say goodbye and head on their way, we wait a bit until i am more settled before hopping on the bus to dali. turns out to be a nice ride, and i have to say that in general, i have been impressed with the driving of the bus driver's in yunnan so far, the last mini van ride excluded! after some uncertainty about our communication in jianchuan, we are dropped off outside of the old city in dali, exactly where we asked to be, and this part of our journey has come to an end. it has been a really fantastic five days here, and in hindsight, we wish we had also stayed longer.
