A delight in China

Does it exist: A small relaxed town in China, chaos free and no herds of Chinese tourism? YES, it's called Dali! Still in the Yunnan province a delightful town filled with beautiful architecture, a huge lake and grand mountains surrounding the town. We planned to stay for 1 night, but ended up staying for a few days. Like most small towns though it proved to be very small and we pretty much fled on day 4 with out saying goodbye to our new and old friends.

Wade had another college friend (who was so nice but I can't remember his name and its totally bugging me)here who graciously exposed us to the life and culture in Dali. I call it a town, but it really is a city. We stayed in Guest House number 6; which has some crazy, easily forgotten Chinese name. It was beautiful, the rooms surrounded a little courtyard. Our room had antique and some antique replica furniture. Chinese are definitely not good decorators, but this place was done with a lot of class. We had a TV and a bathtub!!! The city's architecture was created to resemble ancient China. The buildings were no more that two stories and made of stone. The streets were all cobble stone and cars were only allowed in the surrounding streets, not in the center. Restaurants and stores lined the streets. Even though this city was created for tourism, it has not yet caught on to crazy Chinese tourism. There are a lot of (a handful) westerners that have set up shop in Dali. It barely felt like China because of the calm and relaxed atmosphere.

Wade and I went to the three pagoda's that are outside of town. We got there a little late, but it was nice because it was virtually empty. The Pagoda's were really old- sorry for the lame details but I can't remember the specifics about them... I guess that's what I get for taking so long to update my blog! In addition to the Pagoda's were hundreds of Buddha's in different brightly painted buildings. We walked the entire thing and climbed many steps. When we got to the top, we saw the most beautiful rainbow. The view was spectacular. The lake and mountain back drop was visible as well as the three pagoda's and the rainbow. We had it all to ourselves as we didn't realize it at the time, but the tourist sight had closed. We were exhausted by the end and were ready to leave. We walked down and saw an employee by the entrance. He didn't say anything to us as we walked towards the exit sign which led us to a 10 minute walk. As I explained we were very tired! When we got to the exit it was locked! Thanks guy, thanks for not letting us know! When we walked back to him he pointed to the entrance and that we could exit that way... arg! A perfect example of how unhelpful the Chinese could be!!!


We had dinner one night at an Indian place, owned by Carl, a really nice Irish guy (his mom Lorraine was visiting- one of the coolest women I have met). Actually before dinner we bumped into a girl named Lauren, I had met her in Hong Kong and almost went traveling with her. She came with us. She mentioned that she had been sick the last few days and was starting to feel better, this will be mentioned again! The food was great and it was even better eating something other than oily Chinese food!

A whole crew of us went out afterwards. There is a bar right next door to the Indian place called Vodka Bar. They have infused vodkas. They have no idea how to infuse vodka. They were disgusting. They had such flavors as jelly bean, skittles, pineapple, toffee (my fave), hot pepper, weed and beef and onion. They basically put such ingredients, crushed, in a bottle of extremely cheap vodka. It just didn't work... but it was fun! They had a roulette wheel with the different shots assigned to numbers... so a spin gives you a mystery shot! Gross,I didn't play. The two bartenders were hysterical Kiki and Jennie. Kiki made the worst drinks and Jennie loved to yell at her (in a loving Chinese sort of way). At one point Kiki was fixing a drink for someone and Jennie yelled "Kiki NO MOH ICE" as she hit her. Kiki replied with "Oh... I am ah too drunk and ah stoned". This place was crazy.

Let me interrupt here and explain a little more about Dali. You see, the above statements are very uncommon for the Chinese, especially women. Woman are not really free enough to act in such a way. Also the very strict laws in China do not permit such activity (smoking weed) with very harsh consequences. But here in Dali, a mystery to us, the police seem to turn a blind eye to such activities. For this, a strong Chinese hippie culture (dreds and all) has cultivated in Dali.

We all went dancing afterwards. Poor Wade was attacked by smelly Chinese girls looking for a little western love. Firstly, let me say they are worse dancers than Italians and secondly, they throw their hair all over the place (in your face) and would just hang on Wade like dead weight. It was one of the funniest things I have seen. Our crew was fun: two french guys (one was Stefan and I can't remember the other), A Swiss guy, an English guy, Carl the Irishman, two girls from Israel, Kiki and Jennie and the three of us Americans. I had a lot of fun dancing with the Swiss guy, but I then turned my attention to Stefan as Wade decided he was cuter. It was a late night and caused the following day to be a very lazy one and it was wasted in bed. Dali was definitely missing our wonderful pool from Jinghong!

The next day we went to the Monday market with Lauren. It was an interesting bus ride away. The market was a local market, not really meant for tourists. It was fantastic. I bought some batik linens and a crazy pair of knit slippers. I thought the slippers were interesting and I wanted to try them on. Before I knew it I had about 10 old ladies around me staring at me as if I were an alien. I think I bought half the items because of the intense pressure they put on you to buy things. There were a lot of women selling produce in their traditional clothing... it was really interesting to see. As we veered off a bit we saw the craziest thing. Some people I guess intending to sell them had tight wooden cages packed, I mean packed, with live chickens! As avian bird flu was back I was not so keen on this sight... but I had to get photos... it was completely unhygienic, inhumane and absolutely insane.

On the ride back we got off at another town which was supposed to be really interesting to see. It was a local minority village. We got there and ended up in some tourist trap where we were ripped off. I don't even know what we saw, but it was not worth it by any means. We had lunch in a local square, some street noodle soup. They sat in an inch of oil and were completely bland. As their was nothing to see in this town, we left.

We went to a restaurant for a drink. The owner turned out to be this crazy guy named Billy. He was Chinese but had lived in NY. We ordered ridiculously expensive and silly drinks, decorated with umbrella's and goofy stirrers. Billy was a crazy character, quite the jokester in a very unwitty, corny sort of way. But he's the kind of guy that you can't help but love, but after one hour of him, you've had all you can handle!

That night as we were having dinner at the Indian place again, the monkey king (Andrew) and Jeremy came running in. As big as China is, we bumped into each other again! We all went next door to the vodka bar for a few hours- the same people showed up, but Wade and I wandered home at a reasonable hour.

Realizing how small this place was Wade and I left the next day for Lijiang.