Dali...You Dirty Hippie Beast

Okay, from the title alone you should be able to get our impression of Dali.  But don't be fooled by the dirty hippie comment.  While there were plenty of those there, the town it self was very clean and very cool.  Just what dirty hippies love!

So, for the sake of your eyes, I'm going to sum up Dali as best, and as quickly as I can. Your welcome.

1. Cool arches.  Dali has all these cool little streets and arches in it.  This is just one example. Through out the town, people were just sitting and drawing.  If I felt artistic, I would have done the same.

 2. The Best. Tan. Ever.  We dubbed it the Neapolitan.  As in the ice cream.  Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla. All in one.  Yum!

 3. What doesn't fit?

4. Cang shan...you beast!  This mountain was huge.  We actually hiked half of it (well half way up it).  Hence many dirty hippies live here because of the various outdoor opportunities the area provides.

5. Such as: Brown, Dirty Water Rafting!  Yes I did go in there.  And yes, there was garbage.  And yes, some water did in in my mouth.  And no, I did not get sick.  Thankfully.

Further proof that I actually got in a raft to float down this river.

 6. Massive amounts of Chinese Tourists!  This group was more excited about us than the cormorants (which we were trying to see).

7. Cormorant Fishing.  They take you out on a boat. They put on a little show.  You can buy the fish for 50rmb.  They paddle you back.

8. But if you are lucky and have a wicked cool boat guy, you get to do this for free:

9. A-cha!  Ed found him on the street.  A-cha was selling tours.  Ed wanted to go with him, so we did.  I was not happy because I though we were going to be taken for hundreds of RMB.  We weren't. We actually got some pretty good deals from A-cha.  So if you are in Dali and are approached by a small man selling tours, ask him his name.  If it is A-cha, go with him.  He's nice.  He's friendly.  He'll give you a deal.

10. The scenery.  You can't really tell from this picture, but it was beautiful. 

Overall, Dali was a pretty good stop along our way.  We met some people that will remain in our memories forever.  We ate some really, really great food (perhaps the best we've had in China).  And we become one with nature.  Or at least became one with some one's garbage.

Xijiang: The Land of Nasal Songs and Green Golf Carts

Ed and I decided to crash a minority village with our awesome whiteness.  We chose the biggest one, called Xijiang.  Supposedly it is the largest Miao (pronounced meow) village with over 1,000 families.  Well I couldn't say for sure that 1,000 families were living there, it was pretty and big. 

Pretty much for two days we sat, enjoyed the scenery and listed to the locals sing.  They have a very unique style of singing.  High pitched and nasally. It is certainly different, but pretty in its own way.

While there, we actually ended up staying in some one's house. Basically, you go to these places and there are one or two families that rent out rooms (B&B style).  In Xijiang, because it is like little Chinese Disney (more on that later), there are a lot of houses you can stay at.  So pretty much, Ed and I hiked up an alley, and waited for the head of house (aka: Mom) to come out and mime sleeping to us.  We'd go and look at the very basic room and move on to see what the next house had to offer.  We ended up staying at this place that had built a patio overlooking the entire village.  We thought we had gotten a deal at 50rmb a night, but it turned out to be 50rmb per person which meant it wasn't that much of a deal.  But it still was pretty cool.

Rice Paddy hike

Anyways, back to the Disney comment.  Lonely Plant says that this place is really rustic, rural.  You know, 'the last greatest minority village' kind of stuff.  And it is.  Except with golf cart mini-buses to drive you around the town (its not that big), two scheduled performances a day (where they make the locals come out and sing--but I'm sure they get paid), and the best part of all the 'Disney-esq' things to do there is this:

This years Christmas card early!  Merry Christmas!!

The weird pose the guy made us do

Glamor Shot: Ed

Glamor Shot: Jen

And just in case you didn't believe us when we said people just take our pictures and that we are rock stars in Asia, here is just one example:

China: The Trip

So many of you know (or don’t) Ed and I decided to travel around China for the summer. We had about 6 weeks total vacation time and in light of trying to save money we decided to check out this humungous country we live in, China. Now there are plenty of places to go, but we had a few decidedly favorites. For me, I wanted to see the western mountains, Dali, Lijiang, Shangrila if possible. Ed wanted to check out some of the minority groups that China has. So with a little research he picked Guizhou province and a city called Kaili.


The original plan was to take a train out to Guizhou’s capital: Guiyang. However after looking at the time table (20+) we decided to fly out. One hour versus 20+. Yes please!  After exploring some minority villages, we were destined to go to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, and Shangrila to do some much needed hiking and nature loving.

Below you will find several posts about our trip. I've tried to make it in chronological order so that you are reading from the beginning to the end of our trip.  That means you will have to click to the 'next page' or 'older posts' options at the bottom of each page.

Enjoy!

Chinese Train Stations: my worst nightmare.

Imagine this: 500 people in a room the size of a bank lobby. There is a giant neon sign above you with train numbers and the number of seats available. They only show the next four days, and the numbers are ticking down as they are being bought up. There are ten to twelve ticket windows, but like anywhere else in the world, only five are open. There are police there, but they are on their tea break, or nap break, or just sitting people watching. Surprisingly here isn’t too much pushing: there is some resemblance to a line, but often, there are people who are cutting in front of you because they can. If you look ahead to the beginning of the line (50 people in front of you), then you see the general push of trying to get to the window. Oh, and the line that you are in is the slowest. line. on. Earth. Welcome to a Chinese Train station.

happy and sweaty on the plane...waiting for take off

An interesting note: before we decided to fly, we actually bought the train tickets at the station. Now Chinese train stations are quite complicated because it is the one thing you can not buy online. You actually have to go to the station to buy the ticket in person (or pay someone to do it for you). And to make matters worse, you can only buy train tickets up to a week ahead of time. So that means that you might want to leave on Friday, but you can’t because A: it is either too far in advance to buy the ticket or B: there are no more tickets because everyone else wants to leave on Friday and the tickets are sold out (and you are standing in line watching the numbers count down…very stressful let me tell you!). So after about two hours at the train station, we bought the tickets, got home and decided to fly! This meant that we had to go back to the train station to return the tickets. We did that the next day and fortunately the return/cancel/refund line was only about 20 people deep and moved quickly. We were there for only 40 minutes!

Kaili, Guizhou

Ahhh Kaili. So green. So mountainous. So in the middle of no where! Our flight was actually delayed for about three hours before we made it to Guiyang. Surprisingly, the airline had us sit on the airplane for those entire three hours. The person next us spoke a little English and told us we were delayed because of some sort of birthday. We have no idea who’s or why we couldn’t take off, but they must have had some reason to delay us. Maybe the candles wouldn’t light or something.


This was one of those times in life where you have two choices on how to react. You can be angry and get all worked up or you can sit and enjoy the peanuts. Our choice was made for us considering the language barrier: sit and enjoy the peanuts. Fortunately, there were plenty of people who chose the get angry option. I was properly satisfied with the level of outrage that my fellow passengers were expressing however I did realize something. Their outrage did nothing! They couldn’t make the plane move. The flight attendants couldn’t make the plane move. The shouting did nothing other than entertaining Ed and I for about an hour.

So back to Kaili. We had done some rough planning ahead of time and when we arrived in the city we knew of a hotel to check out. We just didn’t know exactly where it was. We got a taxi driver to take us to the street it was on, but he didn’t know where it was so he just stopped and let us out (quite common). Ed and I walked up and down that street three times before we decided to stop and call the hotel (to get directions). Of course, the hotel was a Chinese hotel and there was the great possibility that they didn’t speak English: but we were going to call anyways and try to somehow (I don’t really know how) get directions to find the place. We made the call and the lady who answered tried really hard to tell us, in Chinese, where the hotel was. We just weren’t getting it; so she decided to come out and get us. Well after about ten minutes of us saying where we were (the street intersection that we were on) the lady we were talking to said wait (in Chinese). So we hung up and waited. 30 seconds later, she shows up. It turns out the hotel was pretty much right across the street down a small ally. We felt kind of stupid for missing it (three times) but we were happy that they came out and got us. It was actually the start of people being overly kind and helpful to us for the entire trip!

Let me just tell you one more thing about the hotel. It had the softest beds ever! Well the softest beds I’ve ever slept on in China…which is pretty soft. Asians in general seem to think that the harder the bed is the better. We often sleep on beds that are reminiscent of wood planks, concrete slabs, or just plain ol’ floors. So when I fell onto this bed and found that it had some spring, some give, some comfort to it, well I was in second heaven. It was so wonderful, that here I am, four weeks later still wishing I was sleeping on it!

Yes I am a tourist and no I do not want to buy 50 wallets.

The reason why Ed and I were in Kaili was because it is used as a central point for several minority villiages of China including the Miao (pronounced Mee-ow; how cool is that?!) and the Dong (yup pronounced as in rhyming with bong—more on that later). We had found an English tour website, but they were out of town so they couldn’t really help us.

After talking to the hotel lady (the same one who found us) she suggested that we rent a private car for a couple of days. The driver would take us where ever we wanted to go for only 200rmb a day. Now just for reference sake, the English speaking tour company was providing the same service for 600+ a day or up to a 1,000rmb for a ‘tour with a tour guide’. Needless to say, we chose the 200rmb option!

The biggest bowl of soup we've ever tried to eat

The Doctor and Stephen; our tour guide extraordinaire and his mighty steed.

local cow removal system

We were set up with a kindly older gentleman that Ed and I referred to as The Doctor, for no other reason other than perhaps he could have been one in a previous life, and his mighty van, Stephen. The Doctor spoke no English and Stephen was pushing twenty years old. And you know what…we had the best time together!

The Doctor took very good care of us. He made sure that we went to good villages, knew what to buy and what not to buy, and showed us to the finest fast food restaurants in Guizhou province. He made our Kaili adventure worthwhile.

quick view from the window

To picture Stephen, imagine a regular sized van. Now chop that van in half, add in a few rust spots, a broken third row seat, and some questionable break systems and you get Stephen. Yet Stephen did his part in holding in there on some of the roughest roads I’ve been on. The Doctor drove us on roads that required four wheel drive (Stephen without a doubt, did not have that); up and down switch back trails; up the tallest mountain and down the steepest road. Be happy I’m alive.



2nd view from Stephen's window



The best part about hiring The Doctor and Stephen was not the price, although that was great, but what we saw. He took many back roads to get us to where we needed to go and the country side in this province was picturesque. Imagine terraced rice paddies, full of bright green rice. Now place those patties on the most impossible mountain out there; so impossible that if you stand on the edge of the paddy, you will be looking down to a sheer drop of about 500 meters. Imagine wooden houses, every opening filled with drying ears of corn and birds going in and out of the houses to pick at the corn. And imagine you’re the only one around. It was the China you see in all those travel videos. It was perfect.

We went to the Shidong market (crazy—people come off the mountains once a week to sell/buy their goods here. What a mass of variety and awesomeness). We went river rafting Shibing on the cleanest river that I’ve ever seen. It was set in this canyon of limestone cliffs. They gave us an inflatable raft and a large stick (no not a paddle but an actual stick) and set us off down the river. It was eerie in the Jurassic Park sense, but wonderful at the same time. I want to go back. We saw the villages of Langde, Matang, and Shiqiao, Duyun, and Zhouxi. These are the people that wear huge amounts of silver headdresses and necklaces. They have a nasal type of singing that is so unique; I’ve never heard anything like it before. And they are known for their weaving and handicraft making (batik). Of course, they over produce the stuff and most of it is machine made now, but you can still find some traditional stuff out there. It was beautiful!

terraced rice paddy

I've added some of the 'outtake' pictures for you all to look at.. I'll have the much better ones up once Ed goes through and approves/disproves the ones he wants. 

White water rafting...yes with a straight up stick...not a paddle, but a stick.  Word.

Market in Shidong

Buying some Batik from the Matong Lady

And drinking beer on the river!