Dali

After Lijiang we went to Dali which was a lot like Lijiang with a new old town and touristy shops everywhere. This was better than Lijiang though, less cheesy. Also the hotel was REALLY nice…. Definitely a major perk. When we first got there a bunch of us went for a walk to the three pagodas (two of which were old, one was rebuilt). We walked through some pretty deserted industrial-ish streets before finally getting to the pagodas. We definitely took a back way that not only showed us the common people but the enormous spiders of Dali and the south of China. We’re talking monster spiders, like up to three inches end to end. Not all of them were that big but when you’re walking under their webs housing ten plus spiders they could’ve been any size.

We got to the pagodas at 7 p.m., exactly when they closed so we headed back to Old Town and our hotel. We stopped at a little hold in the wall restaurant on the way back where we all sat on little stools and chose what we wanted to eat from a rack of veggies against a wall. The woman who owned the place was so nice and brought out some of the best food I’ve ever had in China. We had eggplant, corn and soybeans, tofu, pork and some other things I don’t remember but were equally good. The woman was so nice and her cooking was so good we went back the next day.

But first, the following day we took a boat cruise on Erhai – a giant, beautiful lake in the midst of mountains and right next to Dali. Unfortunately the cruise turned out to be a pretty disgusting tourist cruise where we were taken first to a little island to climb to the temple at the top. A lovely thought really until you get off the polluting boat to see the vendors lined up on wither side of the path to the top all trying to sell you things and get your money. Back on the boat we watched a tea ceremony with several dances performed (supposedly) by the minority group there. Unfortunately this was not nearly as cool as I thought it would be… the music was a-blaring and the dances and tea were not too good. Oh well. If I had to choose a low part of the trip that would probably be it.

Ah, I forgot a monumental dinner in Lijiang. This one afternoon we went boating on a lake and afterwards we went to a village for dinner. Because we only got there at maybe 4 or so we were first lead down to a garden where we learned to play Ma Zhong, but on the way to play, we past a slaughtered pig on a cart. Going up to dinner the pig was gone and but there was definitely a few drops of blood? on the stairs up to the dining room. Sure enough dinner consisted of hog ear, pig feet, and a wide variety of other pork dishes. I gotta say, the ear wasn’t really my cup of tea but the feet were pretty good. We also had a chicken and fungus soup which was pretty good too.

Also, I am working on uploading the pictures… here’s the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/checkerbloom/2008_08_29?authkey=yom1D2qcHDI#