Dali and Going Home Sick

The last major stop of my summer travels was Dali, a city near a rather large lake sporting a few temples and a lot of minority culture representatives. Our time there was brief and perhaps the best part was taking a tour around a few attractions on the lake. That said, it was a nice destination and we had a great time there.


Traditional clothes to this region.

The end of my holiday had arrived so I returned to Kunming with Jenny and then flew home to Hangzhou. I had spent most of the travels quite healthy, apart from almost dying in Yangshuo. But in regards to my stomach, I had not had much trouble. The night before going home though, we ate at a restaurant known for its gut wrenching ability. The next morning I was fine but by mid afternoon I felt quite ill. I spent the entire flight back to Shanghai feeling awful but by the time we arrived I was feeling a little more lively. We then got a cab home to Hangzhou.



Though I began feeling better that evening I was still vaguely ill a month later. I think I had a stomach parasite but I never addressed it and now whatever was wrong is better. At least I feel a little less like dying every-time I see food.

Dali

Xishuangbanna and Damenlong

This place seems unlike other parts of China.

From Kunming, we travelled to south Xishuangbanna, a 10 trip on an overnight bus. Here we were rather close to the border of Myanmar and it looked a lot like Thailand. We only had a few days here and most of that time was spent eating banana pancakes because we found a restaurant that made brilliant ones which were the highlight of our trip to Xishuangbanna.


Me impersonating a tree root.

As a side trip, we decided to go 70km further south, making us only 10km from the border to a small town called Damenlong. Usually 70km of driving does not take too long, but on this occassion there was no road and there was a lot of mud as well as a few trucks stuck in it here and there so it took us about 5 hours. To remind us of our efforts, when we got there it was pouring with rain and a seemingly quite uninteresting village. Despite the telltale signs of a meal that would probably result in food poisoning, we had a few noodles while we waited for the rain to pass. The reason we had ventured to such a remote place was that the Lowly Planet guide advised it for 2 temples of the local religion. We visited one then shortly returned as we did not find it too intriguing. The return trip took closer to 4 hours.


Friends eating in Damenlong.

I think this insane day-trip was interesting because it exposed a lot more of the culture than might usually have been experienced. Life there is not at all like life in other places I have visited.

A few days later, we returned to Kunming for one night before going on to Dali.

Please view more photos of these places here.

Xishuangbanna

Kunming and Matilda

Kunming before the day starts and me without having washed.

The train was quite fun and a lot less interactive than my train ride to Beijing. There were four of us at this point but we were spread out between two roomlets. On a train like this, there are soft beds and hard beds. The soft beds are in lockable, air conditioned rooms with 4 beds and the hard beds are in open ended rooms in carriages without AC. We were on hard beds so it was quite warm. Our trip started at 9 am and would end the following day at about 6 am. Despite being too hot most of the day, the evening cooled down and we had a good sleep.


Matilda and Jenny.

The next morning when we arrived in Kunming, it was too early for most shops to have opened. We walked around, found an internet cafe, eventually had breakfast, and then got in contact with Matilda, a friend of Jenny's. She had a bit of extra space at the apartment that she was living in so two of us stayed at her house while the other two stayed in a nearby hostel. We did not do much in Kunming apart from eat brownies and buy pirated dvds. Also, 3 out of 4 of us (plus Matilda) got ill from food, something that Matilda and her friends say happens a lot there.


We were tired. This is Matilda's couch.

After a few days, we took a bus down to another city, Xishuangbanna. A few days later, we were back in Kunming for another night before going to Dali. Jenny and I eventually returned only to leave the next afternoon to go back to Hangzhou.

Da Zai

The view out my window.

From Yangshuo, we went to Guilin where we booked a train ride to Kunming for a few days later. We left Guilin the same afternoon to a small village high in the mountains called Da Zai. To get there, we had to take a bus along a series of mountainous dirt roads, but because there had recently been a lot of big storms many parts of the road were missing. These were in the process of being replaced by men working to repair them and there were piles of dirt and rocks that had fallen.

We eventually got there and on leaving the bus, we were confronted by a crowd of old women who wanted to carry our bags. We told them that would not be necessary and we were happy to carry them ourselves. It turned out this was a pretty stupid thing to do because although they told us it was only a simple 20 minute walk to the place we would stay they did not mention that it was actually 30 minutes and involved climbing over several mountains and many hundreds of stone stairs. During this process, one of my friends nearly passed out as we were carrying quite a lot of stuff. When we eventually reached the top, we were given rooms with amazing views. We walked around that afternoon and I ran into some pony problems on the mountainside.


Pony Problems. It was hogging the pathway. To my right is a steep drop off.

The next day, Jenny (one of the friends I had been traveling with) and I got up early and looked at the sun as it rose. It was quite nice but very small and way too early in the morning so when we returned to the guest house we both fell back asleep. In the next two days, we walked up and down the big mountain as little as possible, it was just too big and steep. Nevertheless, we did go down to the village below and tried to swim in a small creek. It was a bit too cold and because I had only recently been deathly ill, I decided I should not get cold.


These are local women showing us things they would like to sell us.

The local people were quite cool, although some of them spent a little too much time trying to sell things to me. They listened to really great music but sadly, I did not get any recordings. On other interesting thing here was that around mid-afternoon we would be asked what we wanted for dinner - chicken or pig. They would then kill the appropriate creature to make us a meal. At one of these meals I gave in to the efforts of one of the locals and bought 2 plain silver bracelets.


This is me on my way down. Yes, I am carrying a freshly tailored suit. I did not think that through so well.

During our stay, we found a much quicker method of descent, so on our last day we used this instead of the route that had originally been taken. We caught the bus back to Guilin where we stayed one night for one night before leaving by train the next morning.

Guilin seemed to be quite an average city so I do not have any pictures. When we went to pick up our train tickets, it seemed quite likely that the agency we had asked to book us a ticket had run away with our money. In the end, they turned up with tickets for a later train and we set off to Kunming, a 21 hour trek on a "hard sleeper" train that had no airconditioning, even though it was a 40°C+ day. However, the trip wasn't too bad and we had quite an interesting time.

Here is a collection of images from my stay at Da Zai

Da Zai

Luckily I was in room 11. 11 is my favourite number.

Yangshuo

Pretty nice view I think. Lots of little mountains.

Our first stop in our travels was Yangshuo, a small tourist city in Guang Xi province. It ended up being a 12 hour trip by bus - it was made longer because some of the roads that they would usually have taken were washed out by the typhoons a few days earlier. The bus we took was a sleeper bus, which meant that instead of seats, they had rows of bunk beds. The trip was quite good, although the beds were not quite as long as I'd hoped. Sadly, my phone was running out of power so it beeped a lot and I needed it on so I could stay in contact with Fan’s travel guide friend, Richard. Also, I had a temperature of 39°C for the whole night and was feeling a little sick.


Inches from death. Or at least a little sick.

When we arrived early the next morning, Richard met us and showed us around. He also showed me to a barefoot doctor, as my high temperature and illness were becoming an issue. The doctor looked at my tongue and gave me a poisonous drink with twigs that I was to drink 3 times a day for the next 2 days. She also said that if my temperature was not down by later that evening, I would need an antibiotic drip and some Chinese medicine energy solution. By that afternoon, I was beginning to feel better so I went for a boat ride with my other 3 friends to see some of the the famous mountains of the area. However, I began to feel unwell again by the end of the boat ride. When one of my friends went back to the doctor's place to pick up the rest of my medicine, the doctor was alarmed enough at my symptoms that she caught a motorbike back to my hotel room with my friend so that she could examine me in person. She determined that I was still too sick and that I would need a drip. (In China, drips are the preferred form of medicine for anything ranging from a cold to impending death.)

Her establishment could not offer such services, so we went to the establishment of a friend of hers from university, who specialised in drips and more Western medicine. This drip room was a small shop that opened out directly onto the street. They gave me the drip and complementary grapes.

That night, I sweated so much I had to change shirts many times and used every one of the shirts I had brought. The next morning, I felt a lot better and went for a bike ride to a place called Moon Mountain and then climbed it.

Moon Mountain was about an hour’s bike ride from the city. The mountain gets its name from a huge hole through the middle. They say that in the distance from every angle it looks like the moon at a different part of its cycle. In any case, we climbed first to the hole and then to the ridge above the hole. There were old ladies selling bottles of water at the top who were in much better shape than us. We were quite exhausted and they were casually running up and down the mountain with styrofoam freezers full of chilled water and juice. After that, we descended and returned to the city.


One of my friends Kayaking.

The next day, we went kayaking with Richard’s brother which was great fun except that we got exceptionally sunburnt and one of my friends ran into a tree, flipping her kayak and almost losing her camera in the water. The other friend who was with her had to jump in the river to retrieve the waterproof bag. He was very anxious to do this as it held his camera as well as hers.

On the way back from kayaking, we say a truck that had fallen off a small dirt road into a rice field. We had to wait while a crane lifted it back onto the road. This was quite cool and it was really interesting to see how the people dealt with such an occurrence. It was certainly treated a lot more casually than I imagine it would have been in a Western country. But perhaps that is because that kind of thing happens more often there.

That evening, we went to Richard’s house for cooking lessons. It was quite fun, although I think I will not open a restaurant just yet. We also got Richard advice on how to precede with our travels and where to go next. He was very helpful.

Here is a small collection of photos from my stay in Yangshuo.

Yangshuo

Back to Hong Kong

The view, looking north, from the Peak.

Before heading out on our travels, we had arranged meet a two friends in Hong Kong. These were the two friends that we would go backpacking with. I also had to pick up the suit I had ordered. This time, we knew our way around a little better and managed to visit the Peak as well as going to the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, as it had just come out in HK and would not be out in China for many months.

Mongkok makes Shanghai look like a village and Melbourne look like a distant training post.

We then took a train up to the border at Shenzhen and caught a overnight bus from there. It is important to note that the day before leaving HK I though I was dying because my wrists looked thin and the day I left I started to have some sort of cold.


A classic Hong Kong Island Street. Note the tram to ecstasy.

Foshan and Fan Ginsong

This is Fan and me at a one of the largest ceramic showrooms. As you can see, my leg is still wrapped with a compression bandage.

I knew that Fan Ginsong lived in this part of China, so I had contacted him a few weeks earlier asking if he would be interested in meeting up. He was interested so I scheduled a time to go to Foshan for a few days. It turned out that Foshan was only about 2 hours drive from Zhongshan so it was not a problem for a friend and I to get there by bus. Fan then picked us up and took us to their international dorm (in China these often act as hotels as well as dorms) At the time there were almost no students because it was the holidays.

Fan gave a tour of the inner city and left us to walk around for the evening. The next day he showed us their student work from the previous year of graduates and then he took us to the more industrial parts of Foshan, we visited a few of the many furniture markets and ceramics show rooms. These were quite impressive - huge buildings full of furniture of many types. The industrial ceramics were also very impressive. Companies supply incredibly accurate mock wood, brick and stone for external and internal use in architectural settings that is visually indistinguishable from the real thing.

While in Foshan, we discussed the rest of our trip with Fan and he offered to ask a guide he knew in a city we had planned to visit (Yangshuo) to help us. He gave us the phone number of the guide and called ahead about our visit. This proved quite useful later in our trip. We left Foshan after three days.


This is a caterpillar. I saw it at a temple in Foshan