Victory! (And a blister to prove it)

Tiger Leaping Gorge was amazing.  The first day was pretty rough, especially the 28 Bends path which was pretty much an upward climb to 2670m complete with 28 hairpin turns for about 2 hours straight.  From there, it was pretty much downhill with beautiful views of the mountains and rapids. 

We stayed overnight at a hostel called Halfway House which is well known for its prime location and scenic toilets.  They had open-air squatty potties (troughs, actually) but they faced the mountains and made for an exciting bathroom visit.  There was also a terrace (appropriately labeled "Inspiration Terrace") where the three of us watched the stars at night and listened to the gorge.  The sunrise was also beautiful and I wish I had been able to fully capture how beautiful it was.

The next day we hiked to Tina's Guesthouse from which we hiked down into the gorge itself.  There were two sets of ladders, the longer one having about 40+ steps that were vertical and quite rickety!  We walked along the edge of the gorge and managed to see two of the three 'tiger jumps' before we turned back because of an aggressive beggar woman.  It was really great to go from the top of the mountains to the very bottom in two days. 

The last night we stayed at Sean's guesthouse, the oldest one in the valley and the most famed.  We spent the night looking at the stars and relaxing by the fire.  My legs were really sore (hiking down means hiking up!) and I have a huge blister on my right foot.  When we got back to Mama Naxi's the next day, Jenna and I immedeately did laundry and boy, was our wash water black!  We had to run three cycles before we felt the water was clean enough to put our clothes in spin dry.  This is also the first time we've done laundry in about two weeks. 

Zaijian, pengyoumen

Sean left for Xishuangban'na yesterday evening and we were quite sad to see him leave, but excited that he's going to backpack his way through the Philipines and other places before ending up in New Zealand.  Jenna and I were very fortunate to find such a positive and easy-going travel buddy!  Jenna (and Andy) left for Chengdu a few hours ago and will return to Qingdao before going to Beijing and then on to Taiwan, her new home and job. 

I leave for Kunming tonight on an overnight train to spend a day before I fly out to Beijing on the 28th to meet up with Cathy and do my Beijing thing.  I'm a little frustrated right now though, because you can only add money to your cell phone from the home province and I am a little SOL right now when it comes to calls, but can still text.  China makes no sense sometimes (or a lot, actually). 

America in NINE days!

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Lijiang is pretty but is essentially a series of shops selling trinkets. Sean and Andy got in before the amazing Mama Naxi's dinner(I destroyed the whole fish) and Evan got in later. The two of them
aren't going up to the Gorge with us, as Andy is still recovering from the 拉肚子.

Sean, Jenna and I are heading out to the Three Gorges Dam in a little  while and hope to make it to the halfway point this evening after  climbing up to the top at 2670m and the 28 bends.

Adventuretime!

Goodbye Dali

Dali is apparently known for these three golden pagodas at the foot of the mountain, so Sean and I went to check them out yesterday (Jenna has a cold...eek) but I found them underwhelming. First of all, they were built recently to add something to the area and you can't even climb to the top of the thing. It's also a whopping 171元 to even enter the complex. We walked up behind the thing and a bit up the mountain to get a good view of Dali and the lake. There are frequent checkpoints on the mountain to make sure you don't  have a lighter because the forests are so dry. There aren't any breaks
on the mountain either!

One of our new friends, Andy, had a bad case of the 拉肚子 (travelers diarrhea). Poor kid likely ate a bad western steak (eat Chinese!) and  was suffering for about 18 hours before I gave him some Cipro. He was  back in action when we left and Sean, Evan and Andy are coming up to
Lijiang tomorrow.

Jenna and I took the bus up to Lijiang this afternoon and are now in our new hostel, Mama Naxi's. Mama herself cooked us a family style dinner, as she does every night, for only 15元 each person! We got four plates of food, bananas and tea. She is so friendly and adorable! We also just witnessed her sending off some people with more bananas, extra water, and lots of hugs and kisses. This hostel also has several dogs running around, but only one bathroom/shower that we know of. Lonely planet wins again!

We're going to explore the city tomorrow. America in two weeks!

Dali: Day One

We took a train from Kunming to Dali because it was cheaper, but took a whopping 8 hours versus the 5-6 it would have in a bus. I prefer trains though, because you can walk around and its not as bumpy as a road would be (don't forget that I got the worst food poisoning in China on a bus in the Shanxi province. Long distance buses are kind of ruined for me). We got into "New Dali", actually Xiaguan, and took a bus to the Ancient City of Dali, "Old Dali". Our hostel is the sister hostel to the one where we stayed in Kunming. The Dali Hump is awesome and we are in an eight-person dorm with heated blankets and a tiled bathroom with a huge overhead showerhead. It's brand new and is pretty great.

The first night we ate at a place called Mr. Li's cafe where we had one of my favorite Yunnan dishes-- the giant hashbrown. Yunnan has some really great potato dishes but the giant hashbrown is the best! We also had some fried yak cheese which was sprinkled with sugar and was very tasty.

Dali is very beautiful and is contained by a wall and several gates. The streets are all cobblestone and there are some cool streams going through the walking streets. It's pretty touristy and the streets are lined with restaurants, cafes, and bars.

Climbing Cangshan

Yesterday we got up and hiked two hours up a mountain backs up to Old Dali. Considering we were already at 6000ft elevaton, we took a lot of breaks! We got up to a temple where we ate lunch made by a really nice man who apparently also made good moonshine. Then we walked for three hours along a paved road that went along the contours of the mountain and we were able to see all the beautiful streams and crevices of the mountain. At the end of the path we took a cablecar down and it was amazing to see how far we had gotten and how high up we were. Dali also has a huge lake near it and the views were spectacular.

We roll in expat packs

The crazy kids from the train wanted us to meet them because it was their last night in Dali so we headed out after a much-needed shower. They had befriended a Chinese local named Peter who had led them to this old man's house in Dali. The old guy currently cuts hair, but has photos in his shop of himself as a Red Guard, playing his violin, and in various places around China. He apparently used to play in the Beijing opera and has played for Mao too!

He taught us how to play the er hu (the Chinese two-string instrument) which was really neat. The two strings were the C-string and the G-string and the fingering patterns were the same as on a cello. It was kind of tricky but really cool one I got the hand of playing a scale on it. The old guy's erhu had so much resin build-up on it and the place that his bow rested had carved an indent into the wood! This was one of the coolest experiences I've hever had in China and I have a few videos of him playing.

I should also note that we picked up two English teachers who are actually teaching outside of Qingdao. One is from England and the other is from Canada and they are 18! Their boss sounds really sketchy and actually fabricated their university degrees for the police.

The expat pack then wandered around on the streets looking for a restaurant to eat at, but we wandered into the red-light district. This was when the train kids decided to pull out their medical grade alcohol and teach everyone to blow fire. Sean blew a huge fireball and I got it on video.

Then we found a chuanr place and sat in the back room until 3am eating some good chuanr and fries cooked in chuanr spice (amazing!). It was a really random night that followed a great day. Jenna's feeling a little bit under the weather today so we're going to walk around the town and just take it easy.

Till next time--

Welcome to Yunnan

We left Guilin on a rainy day and managed to find Sean right before he attempted to buy a train ticket with pictures (three stick figures) and a lonely planet phrasebook. The sleeper train was great- our car wasn't full and we met a cool group of kids who had been working at a rock climbing company in Yangshuo. They were also totally nuts (one dropped her phone down the toilet on the train) but made for good company on the train ride. We stayed up pretty late drinking Snow beers (!!!) in the dining car (then another one of them tried to steal a train conductor's hat and then after I woke him up, tried to return it naked).

I bought a camera charger yesterday, so photos of the trip onward will be plentiful. Kunming is a really chill city and it's warm during the day and a litle brisk at night. We walked around the public park yesterday and it was filled with ladies dancing, old guys singing, and kids playing. The funniest part was when a little girl yelled "外国 人!" (foreigners!) at the top of her lungs at Sean and Jenna. Her parents laughed and I nearly died! Then we had a really amazing Yunnan dinner (lonely planet never fails!) complete with fried yak cheese, prawns in a foil bag lit tableside, and chili battered fish.

This morning we got up early to head over to the Stone Forest in Shilin, about 120km southwest of Kunming. However our early start was negated when we took the wrong bus and then decided to buy our train tickets to Dali.

Ok so... the train station is already a zoo and it's one month until Spring Festival. There are huge gazebo tents and portable dividers outside the train station to sell tickets. There are even army guys with batons to direct people lining up to the next open window! I'm so glad I'm getting out of here next month.

Anyway, the Stone Forest took about 2.5 hours to get to and was also a whopping 170元 per ticket. The place was overrun with Chinese tour groups, complete with matching hats and whistles. The perifery was amazing though and the park is like looking at another planet. Imagine pointy grey rocks protruding from the ground... covering many hills.

We met a group of Germans that had been on the road for months, driving from Germany, through Iran, Pakistan, Tibet, Krygystan and now China. They had an orange van and this huge red sandcrawler thing which they have been driving around. Theyre going to Laos, Burma, and
Vietnam next, so watch out! Try orangetrotter.de or project-Asia.com to follow their travels.

This leg of the adventure was fun and a lot slower paced than before with pleasant weather and random people. tomorrow we take a morning train to Dali and should be there in the evening. Happy MLK day!