Trip Log: Yunnan Province, China

4/2 Kunming, largest city in Yunnan province

• Hour and half flight from Chiang Mai.
• Taxi ride: Volkswagen jetta, driver has cage around himself, shouting into the phone the whole ride
• Meet Alek and Thela at Camellia Hotel
• Down an alley for street BBQ, baijiao (sorghum liquor 56%), beer, and Burmese rum (ouch).
• We learned about gambay. it means that guys have to down the whole glass. women can just sip. Shauna is a bad-ass, gambays with the guys.
• Hundreds of skewers. Whole eggplant, grilled, then sliced, served in it’s own skin, with sauce of ground pork poured over it. And Shiloh got noodle soup.

4/3 A day in Kunming

• The gambay lesson was hard learned. Hurty head.
• Electric scooters are silent and everywhere. I’m sure people get hit all the time because they don’t hear them.
• The whole city seems quiet and clean. Not Hanoi. Alek says this is a new phenomenon.
• Sim card for 15USD. GPRS 500mb 15USD. GPRS is fast here. 3G advertised everywhere in the whole country. Never worked for me though.
• Tried to get a camera charger. Guy at cellphone shop called a guy, who delivered it there in 10 minutes. Didn’t work though. The shop had some great phone brands that’ll look familiar to you.
• Over The Bridge noodles at the Brothers Jiang. This shit had BEES in it. Very interesting.
• Golden horse emerald chicken park. Yeah, that’s it’s full name.
• Huge walking mall, many many city blocks. With fancy stores and a fashion show.
• Needed coffee. Only could find McDonalds. Sad.
• A bunch of skaters outside. 9 year-old smoking cigarettes while he skates.
• Btw, everyone has these tea containers with a filter of geniusness built-in. I got one. And then lost it.
• Went to a big park, where lots of people were outside making music, dancing, singing. There were cool water toys, and scary dolls to ride, and proximity-detecting automated garbage cans.
• Found a little local joint for dinner. A bunch of the patrons were the musicians from the park. The food was again epic – many kinds of veggie and mushroom dishes, cured pork, soup.

4/4 Zhongdian

• Saw what can only be described as “megahousing” developments outside of Kunming.
• Factories everywhere, in suburbs outside the city. Saw a red cloud over a valley of factories. Red.
• Oh look, that is a road. On a cliff along the river. How. The. Hell.
• Himalayan mountains in the distance? Easily twice as tall as the giant mountains we’re flying over.
• Land in Zhongdian. Small airport, but clearly new. Full of Tibetan items, and cold-weather gear. It’s COLD.
• One hour flight, landing at 12,000ft above sea-level. Yeah, we all ended up with mild altitude sickness for the first day. That kinda sucked.
• Zhongdian was renamed Shangri-La 10 years ago to increase tourism.
• Yak fields on the way to town.
• More Jetta cabs. Must be state-mandated.
• Populace is Tibetan mostly, but many other ethnic minorities present.
• Pink hat ladies! Scarf tied around hats.
• Old town. Cobblestone streets. Carved wood structures.
• Fashion for guys is like 80s bad boy. Or black blazer and slacks… for doing manual labor.
• Women wearing slave-to-fashion wear, or traditional garb. Not much in between.
• Lunch spots advertise with bao steamers. Ate at East City North Cooked Wheaten Food King. Had three noodle soups. With yak meat. And dumplings.
• Land of no salad. Seriously, there’s almost no fresh vegetables in any food we had the whole trip. Always cooked.
• Last day of Cleaning the Grave holiday. Half the town was in the graveyard as we checked in, lighting off firecrackers by the grave.
• Checked into the guesthouse. No inside heat in the guesthouses.
• Meet Alek’s friend Meow Meow (sp?)
• No running water for 4 months during winter because pipes are frozen.
• Nightly dancing in both the old-town center, and new-town center. They like to dance.
• New hotels in new town. I bet they have heat and running water and power all year round.
• Little Potala palace. Megatemple of Tibetan Buddhism.
• Shiloh rode a wizardly yak.
• Yak butter tea. Yak snacks (aka jerky).
• Tibetan dinner. Creaky wooden restaurant. Cold, only space-heaters. Yak SASHIMI, square noodle soup, meat pie (ground yak).

4/5 Zhongdian

• Breakfast of bao and dumplings.
• Tiny bao, translated as “little bamboo dragon dumplings”
• Rented bikes, rode 20km around a lake.
• Saw Tibetan temples, some kids, a pig.
• Saw lots of yak, birds, fish, and more than a few yak carcasses.
• We let some kids ride our bikes.
• I got to fly my kite!
• Lunch. I love this place.
• Local market. Tibetan bacon. Tea. Chilis. Entrails. Bells.
• This lady loved Shiloh’s hat.
• Prayer wheel. Again, with the giantism. Billions of “ohm mani padmi ohms” per spin. Must do odd number of spins.
• Hot pot dinner with Meow Meow. One pot of yak, and one of “home” chicken (aka free range. ish.). Owner wanted to wear Shiloh’s hat.
• Soccer bar. Owner was huge Spain/Barca fan. Left him my Pique jersey to put on the wall. Power went out in all of old town, so we drank by candlelight.
• Oh, and the power outage? That means no heated blankets in our not-heated room tonight.

4/6 Zhongdian, Tiger Leaping Gorge

• Hey, the blankets were quite effective, probably yak wool.
• Bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge.
• The hike starts with a nice meandering valley stroll, and nice views.
• Followed by “24 bends”, a long series of switchbacks.
• “I smell weed. Or poop.” – Shiloh. It was an old man with grandson in lap, smoking weed out of a long skinny pipe.
• Ladies along the trail selling bags of weed, saffron and snickers.
• 7 hours of hiking. Beautiful, amazing views every 5 minutes.
• Got to Halfway House guesthouse. Sat on the deck, had a beer and checked out the view.
• Alek has a Chinese name: “Overcoming the power of mugwort”. He’s looking for a new one.
• Dinner: two mushroom dishes, eggplant, gung pao. Damn.
• Alek went into the kitchen and found their house-infused baijiao. One was mushroom. Yes, mushroom liquor. The other was olive, papaya, goji berry… and other stuff. Both were surprisingly good.
• Closed it out with biajiao, beer, tea, cards and Snickers.

4/7 Tiger Leaping Gorge to Lijiang

• Morning hike out, about 3 hours.
• Tina’s Guesthouse is on the road. Awesome roll-out menu, with qmelettes.
• Had breakfast of Shanghai porridge, noodle soup, and apple pie (more like an empanada).
• Alek took a bus out to the main highway to meet his friend, meeting us in Dali in few days.
• Shiloh’s feet hurt, so she camped out at Tina’s.
• We hiked the down a scary steep “trail” (which would you choose?) into the bottom of the gorge. Epic nature.  We look happy because we haven’t started hiking back up yet. Well, we can’t say we weren’t warmed. Too bad it’s not high-season, or some old women could’ve carried us up safely on one of these.
• Back up to the top. Yeah, the gorge is amazing.
• We took a cab to the highway… Alek is there! His bus never came, so he’s coming with us Lijiang.
• AWESOME techno remixes of western pop songs the WHOLE way to Lijiang. I sat in front, so had the best view of the 94 times we almost died in head-on collisions. The scenery was all rice terraces. Wow.
• Got into Lijiang. It’s like an old Chinese town. Taken over by Disney.
• Checked-in at the guesthouse. Wonderful decor.
• There’s ba ba. Yak jerky. Yak yogurt. Lots of tea. Dessert.
• Alek took us to a real Nakhi restaurant for dinner. Huge store of cured pork. We drank some WFSM beer, had wild mushrooms, some fungus called “frog skin”, everything soup, and the pork. And more baijao. Did I say I loved China yet?
• Back to the guesthouse, had some bad wine on the balcony overlooking the city.

4/8 Lijiang, Dali

• Breakfast of Nakhi omelet and, yep, noodle soup.
• Before leaving town, went to Black Dragon Pool. Garden, with a pond that reflects Jade Emerald Mountain. Touristy. But nice picture op.
• Lunch of green beans and fermented bean sauce, the song er mushrooms (song rong?), and knife-cut noodles.
• We saw Mao.
• Dali bus was 5 hours long. Longer than we expected. Great drive though. Except for the nasty cat on a leash.
• Checked into a guesthouse, and headed into old-town for dinner. Old-town is huge, and touristy, but way cooler than Lijiang. Castles, yo.
• In Dali, all the food in a restaurant is kept out front, as advertisement. And mushrooms!
• More skewers, beer and biajiao.
• Went for dessert. Heart shaped chocolate cake… on lettuce. Chocolate parfait… with a cherry tomato. Apple pie, that was a flavorless apple empanada… on lettuce… with strawberry ice cream.

4/9 – Dali

• Breakfast of bao, black boiled eggs, baba stuffed with carmel sauce.
• Alec’s out, back to Thailand. All three words of Chinese we know will now be put to the test.
• Somehow it’s lunch already. Asparagus, tofu, emperor oyster mushrooms with dry-cured ham.
• Taxi to the cable car. Hike from cable car to chairlift is too long, canceling that. Saw a giant chess set, and a mirror pond.
• Taxi to the chairlift that we didn’t hike to. Beautiful ride. Look down, oh a grave. Oh look, some more. OHHHHH, thousands of them. Chairlift mountain forest graveyard.
• At the top, we hike to the Higherland Inn, only thousands of steep steps up the mountain. Zero view. WTF. Head back down the trail to the restaurant with a great view. The place has turtles in a tub… adjacent to all the food that’s on the menu. Hmmm.
• I got some wild mushrooms. Instructions: soak 3 hours, scramble with egg.
• Did some shopping in the old city, got some pasta, and headed back to the hotel to chill.
• Watched a kung fu movie with lots of flying. Saw a commercial for cleavage pills.

4/10 Dali

• Banana pancakes and fresh melon for breakfast. Off to Xishuang for cormorant fishing.
• Local market. Saw an awesome computer store. Had noodles that were cut off a giant slab that looked like butter. Found the spice they put on the skewers.
• Cormorant fishing! Rowed. Sang songs.
• On the way back, taxi driver took us to the obligatory kickback stop, a marble shop. The Chinese word for marble is “stone from Dali”.
• Shiloh chilled at the hotel while we rode bikes to the lake. Stopped at a bakery where they had a “selection of mini sandwiches” on the menu. Turns out the mini sandwiches meant “all sandwiches on the menu, put into one”. Fail.
• Before dinner, got a foot massage, where they had us put our feet in BOILING water.
• Shiloh got a foot steam bath. Shauna: “OK I can smell foot. It smells like a funk dumpling.”
• Saw some locals smokin’ tough.
• Hunted down the wild grilled eggplant for dinner again.

4/11 Back to Kunming

• Bus to Kunming. Buses here are cheap, and constantly running. Gotta keep your valuables with you. And there’s no bus stops, just people waiting on the side of the highway.
• Another 5 hours on the road. We passed through Mushroom Town. And went through multi-mile long tunnels.
• Waited a couple of uneventful hours at the airport, spent our last yuan on tea, and flew home.