Lijiang Yunshan Hotel

... array. Suffice to say, the boiling hot
mlange of fungi soup was a feast for the senses. I chanced upon a young farmer
displaying a basketful of Matsutake mushrooms (song rong, pine
mushrooms), telling me he had hand-picked them on a dawn trek through
the pine forests rimming Lugu Lake northeast of Lijiang. Matsutakes are revered as the "king
of mushrooms" in Japan. But the young man only wanted a tiny fraction
of ...

... watched the very boring and repetitive CCTV and I used the internet. After 8:00 we went to Naxi Family Restaurant and had kung pao chicken (cubes of meat and carrots in a simple broth, not spicy), mixed veggies - bok choy, bean sprouts, elephant ear and carrots and minced chicken with thin slices of cucumber. It was all really good. I had green tea and Bill had a coke. Dinner was 90 yuan. After dinner we crashed early because we are going to go on a tour in the morning.

... going up there but i recovered - made of strong stuff - just joking Tiger Leaping Gorge Now if you come to the province of Yunnan do this trek it is well worth it. Me, Declan and Wannis evenually got up and did the day and a half trek. We were pretty lucky with the weather as it was mild with blue skies as the previous days were rainy. On the first day the hardest part of the trek is the start as it was sloshy and uphill and with my Nike trainers they werent the best ...

... Gorge park headquarters where a woman jumped on to get out admission fee off us. No one had told me beforehand but a student card gets you 50% discount for anything in China; had I known this I would have got one made in Bangkok. Anyway, Sammy was confident that they can't even read roman characters so I tried it on with my driving license but this woman had obviously been round the block a few times as she spotted it immediately and I had to pay full price ...

Freezing cold in the hotel which seems to be the norm. Set off for Zhuijie monastery. It is amazing that these places were only discovered about six years ago and they are one of the few places in the world where you can see such rare birds. set off in our mini buses but were ferried up the steep and narrow road in a fleet of smaller vehicles. At this altitude the climb up would be ...

... opened to reveal loads of tourist tat and irritating hawkers. At the hostel we decided to rent some bikes and head out of town to visit a monastery near to a village called Baisha. Although we couldn't find the monastery in the end, we did run into the local celebrity, a Naxi herbal healer called Dr Ho, who has featured on Himalaya with Michael Palin, as well as a load of other documentaries, and a joint study with the Mayo Clinic. Good on the guy - I don't buy ...

Lijiang isn't exactly a carbon copy of Dali, but it is quite similar, with the old town, the local minority (this time Naxi instead of Bai in Dali), the surrounding mountains, etc. Like Dali, it is also in your face touristy (is that a word?) but I found Lijiang better than Dali in almost every sense. Actually, as I talked with travellers along the way (a lot of people taking the same route) it was a comparison of what was worse, which is not a good sign, but ...

Hi all, I am currently sitting in an internet caffe in Lijiang. This internet caffe publishes itself, as all the internet caffes we saw in China, by a big sign of "World of Warcraft". It seems that this game has conquered China. Almost all the people we see in internet caffes play it. I wonder why it hasn't been that successful in Israel. The last time I wrote I was in Chengdu, waiting for Eyal and Michal to join me. The next day I went to see the "People's Park" in ...

... erected, but keeping to the local traditional style with detailed and intricate wood carving throughout. Set off in search of food with a Dutch chap (Felix) also staying at the hostel, and with whom I would spend the next week travelling south. After dinner, Felix and I wandered the old town ending up at the "town square" where 100's of locals were engaging in a traditional Tibetan dance with ...

... travellers cheques!! Somehow Debs had managed to book us first class for our flight to Lijinag, which menat that we got to sit in a VIP lounge, be fed and watered and told exactly when to board our plane.The pampering continued on board - shame it was such a short flight!! The scenery as we approached Lijiang was awesome, breathtaking and beautiful - reminding me why I've dreamt of coming back here for 10 years!! A short minibus ride and then a taxi and we reached the Old Town ...