Space Café
Trip Start
Apr 04, 2004
1
4
34
Trip End
Jun 07, 2004
Dali,
China
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
13th April 2004
I am all properly settled in to Dali now with my pipe and beard. And I am interested in how I shall attack the outlying hills . I have some coffee, rent a mountain bike and careen through the streets downhill all the way down to the lake's edge. There are ducks and farmers burning their land reducing it to a blackened stubble. It was on the way back that I find the elusive Space Café and the girl who runs the place, Rosie. I survey the small bar area as I sip a pineapple beer and learn of Rosie's ambitions to single-handedly run a small bar and guesthouse alongside the competition.
Unlike the old stalwarts like Guesthouse number 5 with lots of staff either cleaning, cooking or organising tours, a big bar area showing nightly movies, a travellers restaurant with all the staple foods like your muesli and yoghurt breakfasts or chicken sandwiches and pizza..
Kitschfest
. Rosie's simple place seems to be like the work of a child in her bedroom with her fantasies glued to the wall. Littered with kitsch, the decor is completely random in design and it's as quiet as a pig farm during Ramadan. In a pleasant rear courtyard stands a pool table expectantly. And a wooden staircase leads from there up to two homely twin rooms. I offer to move in figuring the change of address is well timed. It may conveniently extract me from the repetitive circus of travelling and travellers of which I am becoming increasingly jaded. And yes, Rosie is in her early thirties and reasonably attractive. Back at number 5, it's the enjoyable, if predictable evening of card games and value-drinking. Drinks are so much cheaper than "back home", it's the old adage of the more you drink, the more you save. Among us this evening are Jim with his adolescent dreams of being a fighter pilot in the RAF. And a financial advisor with a severe case of the runs. Poor bastard is booked onto a long bus ride tonight, what a nightmare. The rest of us hit the Bird Bar. A place with a reputation for late nights and a relaxed drugs policy. At the entrance there is a solid steel door with an observation flap just like the cell doors in British police stations, or so I'm told . We also have with us a British Airways commercial pilot and it's his birthday. We ensure he has had more than enough to drink before grabbing his mobile phone and calling his Mum in the UK . " Hello ! Your son wants to tell you how much he's enjoying his birthday Mrs....." passing the device back to its stammering owner. The next day I bid them all farewell and in the torrential rain with my black hooded raincoat and big pack in its cover, I plod through the streets of Dali looking like some huge insect.
Next ; An unlikely artist
