Salvador Probably Would Have Liked It Here

Trip Start Apr 27, 2006
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Trip End Apr 01, 2008


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Where I stayed
Guiyuanju Hotel
(Dali hotels)

Flag of China  ,
Friday, March 21, 2008

A much better bus trip brought me to Dali, which sits in a valley at 6,600 feet with a huge lake on one side and mountains of over 13,000 feet on the other.  "Old" Dali is a preserved slice of old China and what I pictured China would be like, although I knew the big cities would be modern.  The city is walled and gated, with cobblestone streets, traditional Chinese facades, temples and "the Three Pagodas" for which it is best known.  It is resultingly a very popular tourist destination (mostly other Chinese though) with a couple of streets catering to Westerners.

There is also a very large Bai (another Chinese minority) presence who wear their traditional clothing and are one of the few matriarchal societies remaining on Earth, including that the women are allowed to sleep around, although I was told that is less frequent than it was.  It is these Bai women that try to sell hash to tourists on the streets, rather than the male motorbike riding pushers of the the rest of S.E. Asia.  Girls do kick ass here. 

Too, there is beginning to have a more Tibetan feel to the architecture and people's faces as I get higher up and closer to the border with Tibet "Foreigner's Street"
"Foreigner's Street"
 .  The food has also changed.  There are fewer fruits in the markets and more vegetables that grow underground or along the ground.  Tubers, a wild variety of mushrooms, turnip-like things, green onion-like things, roots, and potatoes (the first time I have seen potatoes).

I was only in Dali for two nights(Sunday and Monday).  I basically just wandered around the city and went up one of the mountains for the view.  I ate Korean food once (because I was craving kimchee again), mystery noodles, fried goat cheese with yak butter, and Bai pickled vegetables.  I also ate at one of the many local restaurants that displayed foods on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant (see pic).  In a new experience for me, I learned that one pointed at what one wanted and it was then cooked.  I had a fish, bizarre mushrooms fried with peppers, and homemade plum wine.  There wasn't much of a nightlife, and what there was was of the Chinese disco and karaoke variety, although I did find the Bad Monkey Bar, yet another of these places started by Reggae-loving, dreadlock-wearing foreign stoners who came to a city one day and never left.  In this case it was two Londoners who had been living in China for over four years, spoke Mandarin and had local girlfriends, but they were nice and spoke English so I could get some questions answered.  That done, I moved on to:

Lijiang, China
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