Dali - Out With The New In With The Old
Trip Start
Mar 03, 2005
1
11
235
Trip End
Ongoing
Dali,
China
Thursday, April 7, 2005
For a start, when I asked how long the bus would take, the ticket seller told me "four and a half, and its express....." Doing the maths from a 10.30am start, that placed me in New Dali (a town called Xiguan which I still can't pronounce) by 3pm and in Old Dali (18 clicks away in a taxi) by 3.30pm. By about by about 1pm when we made our third stop, this time for lunch, I asked the bus attendant as to when we would arrive in New Dali. She said "three o'clock".
Now I know you will be beginning to think that I am obsessed by toilets. Well, that's because I am obsessed - actually its more a case of considering what people are willing to accept as every day passable hygiene levels, versus the use of a quality 'American Standard' loo seat, a regulation hard scrubbin' with a dunny brush, and a decent squirt of Toilet Duck. The ultimate test is the Chinese Bus Stop Toilet ('CBST').
I have developed a three-fold strategy on the CBST:
1) if you can hold on, do.
2) number twos is always out of the question. Always.
3) as the bus stops, everyone rushes out to the toilet. Hence rather than end up in the mass of desperate latrine-users all at once, hang back for at least three minutes, before taking one last lung-full of clear air, running and unzipping the fly as you enter the doorway.
I have found that this three pronged method often minimises your contact with the sights, sounds and aromas that stereotype the CBST. I had however not anticipated that stop that was stop number two on this journey....
I did the obligatory wait three minutes before heading inside for a pith-stop. Alas three minutes wasn't enough, as I was initially met by the sight of three Chinese bare-derierres, squatting over holes in small cubicles, without doors. Its like driving past a car accident - your brain says "don't look" but your eyes somehow do catch the fact that two of the locals are smoking while they dump, only a few inches from the hole in the ground.
Then the aroma hits you like, well, like a Chinese Bus Stop Toilet. There is nothing else like it on this earth.
Then you realise that there are flies swarming all over the place.
Then you realise your stomache has turned over and may well be heading in a northerly direction.
Then you realise that you haven't yet pee'd, and you've really got to go, and you've really got to get it over with before you hurl.
Mental Note #4: If Harpic announces in-roads into the Chinese market, buy Harpic shares....
They are in the midst of building a massive four lane split highway between Kunming and Dali. Alas, neither side of the road is actually fully finished. Hence the trip is highlighted by rocks and concrete scattered across the road, regular swerving across to the other side of the centre road barrier as directed by the minimal signage, driving through incomplete and thus dark 500 metre tunnels in a bus where the driver refuses to turn on the headlights, and livestock (of the donkey and goat kind) regularly wandering across the road from the horribly close to the highway villages.
Alas, the ticket seller and bus attendant had it all wrong. When he ticket seller said "four and a half", she meant "4.30pm". When the bus attendant said "3pm" she meant "three more hours". Hence all in all I was stuck on this bloody trip for around 7 hours.
Thankfully Old Dali is a nice place to arrive at after such a trip. As the name suggests, its an old town - with traditional cobblestone streets and buildings, and with a great choice of western food as well. Its a mix of touristy and Tibetan, and quality quality quality Yunnan coffee (my little caffeinated friend...)And its also filled with some decent people to spend a little time with, including Carlos the Kiwi who left home to travel in 1992 and hasn't got back yet, Sonya the Canuck-student doing a thesis in Eco-friendly Tourism (and thus willing to listen to my rants on the Malaysian 7-Eleven double plastic bag system which is killing the environment), and Mark the Pom who's alter-ego was Taquin Postlethwaite, and who indulged in the culinary delights of rat, cat, dog and snake meat while on tour.
Old Dali is shadowed by a large mountain range, some of which are still snowcapped. Now you need to understand, I'm a fella who has only seen snow three times in his life, so this is somewhat of a cool thing to see. (in the temperature sense and the 'way cool' sense). So my first mission was to head up and have a closer look, via a cable car which takes you up from town to about 2500 metres.
Realising that the snow was still some distance away (try 1500 metres up), I headed a little further to the Highland Inn. Here I met a handful of interesting folk who were staying up there, who gave me some decent advice as to which path to travel to see a few sights in the heights.
That path was a freshly paved road, due to the magic that is Chinese engineering (or perhaps blind hope), stuck on the side of a mountain. Actually freshly paved is an understatement. The concrete was still being laid and the stones placed as I made the walk along towards the heights. I did actually make a couple of Chinese road makers irate by stepping on some stones where the concrete mix hadn't set yet. I'd suggest coming back in a few weeks to check it out if you do not want to face the equivalent of 'Chinese Concrete Shoes'.
My night with a handful of travellers was disturbed by the howls of horror emanating from my gullet. I even had to leave half a beer at the table (for which I was reminded later as being "Un-Australian").
Food Poisoning 1
Adrian 0
The remainder of my time in Dali (another two nights) was essentially spent within a three hundred metre radius of the 'No 5 Guesthouse'. I had done the calculations, and that was the maximum distance I could run in 2 minutes flat, with legs closed together while clenching myself tighter than a goldfish's bum.
My obsession with porcelain continues.
