San Ta Yuan Hotel Dali

... out & lots of lovely water features in the old town with watercourses in the streets & lots of flowering plants & of course willow trees & clumps of bamboo.





Had an early dinner of Lamb Chops & mashed potato , onion & baked beans. So good!!!








Came back ...

... 1489;רזי 01; המועט 97;ם. שאריו 14; המים מנותב 93;ת לבריכ 93;ת דגים ופלגי מים המלוי 01; את שבילי 93; היורד ...

... free desktop november calendar boise soccer november 1, 2008 i am dreaming of a white christmas ...

... ganja merchants are now nothing more than a slight annoyance. How times change!



Feeling the need for company, I headed back to my guesthouse to chat with Dmitri, my Russian Isreali roommate I'd met the night before. Dmitri is laid back to the point of being almost non-communicative, and his slow drawl is indicative of a strong fondness for the aforementioned illicit substances. He's a good guy, and after a time we headed off to a bar ...

Feeling like scott of the artic we returned to Dali and its horizontal way of life. With a week to kick back and enjoy some well deserved rest and relaxation. Our host and legend Dave was quick to challenge me to a game of pool. I win i get the first nights accommodation free, he wins i buy him a beer. My kind of odds, thanks Dave for the first night, I slept as well as I have all trip. It didnt take us long to find our local friends and others who we had met on the mountain ...

... that steep I don't think there'd be any other way. It was a blast, riding past rice paddies and corn fields to the mountain, through the tea growing in the hills, through the mountain forest to an old Buddhist/Daoist temple at cloud level. Later on that night, I went into the city myself. It's hard to find a bar to saddle up to and meet people in most Chinese cities (see earlier entries on nightlife), but Dali is different. It's a place where a lot ...

... my worth is not measured by how well i can cook and my job as a bartender was never to stroke a man's ego by downing beers with him while he called me baby, I am NOT ANYONE"S ****ING BABY. o yah...and I will talk back to you. So I guess maybe all those things makes me a complete stranger to this place, to this country. I told myself that I would dedicate the remaining two month of this trip to China, the country that had given me birth. To be with my ...

... variety! I bought another cool Buddha buddy and we set off for Dali in the vanwagon.... Dali was as touristy as it lived up to be there were so many souvenier shops selling exactly the same things 80% of the shops only contained leather bags, belts, purses and wallets. We had a quick look around and bought some bakery products which are very numerous cheap. We also found an english bar called Bad Monkey which we came back to later that night and got drunk bought more cakes and ...

... can't even poo in friends houses this was something i needed to adapt to. After some method lessons from Jelle who had already been in China for 2 months, i decided to have another go. He also told me it usually helped if you went for a shower at the same time (same bathroom session not together!). I looked everywhere for my shower gel and shampoo but couldn't find it. I remembered i had put in my bag which had the lanterns i gave to the leader as a present. After alot of ...

... yelled 'HELLOW' at them and pointed accross to my conversation partner. Anyhow, after breakfast or lunch or Brunch we decided to head down to Erhai Hu or Lake Erhai. We left the city walls and made our way through the fields stopping to say hello to all the women farming the land. When we arrived at the foreshore we spent a few hours walking the streets of the ...