ErHai -Gui Bin Yuan Dali

... cormorants out onto the lake where the birds are set free and get to work. It is truly amazing and within a short period of time they have caught 3 good-sized fish. There is obviously tremendous skill involved in training and handling these birds. Japan also has cormorant fishing but it is only in China that the birds are fully domesticated. The fishermen’s skills have obviously evolved to cater for the tourist
Dali, Yunnan, China travellin.light

... amp; had maccas for lunch!. Back at the hostel at 4.30pm & will hang out here until we catch our train tonight. The tickets on a hard sleeper were $15 each & we leave at 9.45pm. Will catch a bus to the train station about 8,30pm. Think it is going to start getting colder now - have needed to wear my jumper here a few times!

... torch of the guy chasing you and getting him! Also, if you throw the powder incorrectly timed, it doesn't really burn and just falls to the ground and makes people cough. A lot of people had singed arm hair!

I had trouble accessing facebook here and figured out how to get through the China firewall to facebook. Either a web proxy which encrypts the URL (regular web proxies stopped working just this week), a SSL web proxy or OperaTor.

... and people to arrive though, but we had good seats at the back of the boat. I was able to put my feet up on the railing. After we got going we went down to get our free tea. Included with the tea was a traditional show put on by young dancers. We missed the first part, but saw the last 2/3's. We were given 2 out of 3 courses of tea. One was dark and milky with coconut. The other was clear and had ginger in it. We were given small samples of all three at ...

... december codes 0ffb6851c3450282e4b6c92667e6bfc7ee7b1bc 8231c0d619e05112ffa2348ffbb8e8111665632 cc free ...

... to make light of the situation despite our uncomfortable bus journey back down the same bumpy road we passed the day before. We arrived in Lijiang around 1pm and immediately jumped on another bus to Dali. About half-way to Dali we were stopped by an accident on the road. A large truck had spun out of control, ripped its front axel completely off and ended up in the ditch. We stood by for 20 minutes as a crane lifted the truck out of the ditch and ...

... but alas, I still remain just plain Si Di Fen Ni! I asked our teacher after and she said FitzGerald-Smith would be about thirteen characters alone! But she translated Smith to Shi Mi Si ("Shi Me Seh") which I'm rather fond of!!! Instead of walking up the hill, we headed to town to do some shopping, took us three attempts to get the bus- Irish buses don't know what full is compared to these buses! Full to the brim, people falling out when the doors open like! Arrived in town ...

Dali - after a 10 hours horrible night train Ivonne and I arrive in Dali. The first think we notice is the blue, blue, blue sky like we know it in Europe. Wow I haven't seen that for a long time it feels. In Yangshuo the sky was blue but not clear blue like here. Ivonne and I catch a bus to Dali old town - another 18 km ride. quite tricky with backpacks huger than yourself and about a 100 locals pressing into ...

... and headed back down again. There is a train that leads to another temple but it's about 12km long and I hadn't the time to do it. Got down to the bottom and cycled to a lone pagoda near the Old Town wall which was the same design as the central one from the Three Pagodas up the road. The area was closed but I sneaked in under the post barrier and took a few photos. Next up it was to the Dali Museum which featured bronzes and Stone Age pottery but wasn't all that ...

... That was what we thought, anyway. The martial arts lessons are a lot of fun, the so called "hot springs" however turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. On arrival, we saw no hot springs, but a large green swimming pool with a tarpaulin roof. I threw a bit of a Kevin moment and refused to go in. I gave in however, as it was my compensation for a rubbish week, and was in for a bit of a shock as i went to get ...