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DaliAug 23, 2007
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The cook from the Dragonfly Guesthouse, Dali.
A woman collects dill weed mear Can Cun village, Lake Erhai, near...
Cormorants, which are used by fisherman to catch and deliver fish to...
Dali. A picturesque albeit smartened-up-for-tourists town sandwiched between the Jade Green Mountains and Lake Erhai, was my next stop.
I ended up spending 10 nights here, staying mostly at the Dragonfly Inn in the small village of Can Cun, near Dali. I got sucked into the somewhat 'relaxed' atmosphere at the Dragonfly, a guesthouse which has more than its fair share of long-stay residents. If you ever stay here you'll know what I mean. But just to show you all that it wasn't all late nights and revelry, I managed to find the time to:
1. During a rain-soaked day, take a horse-trek up the Jade Green Mountains with Claire, a former tour-guide for Sundowners.
2. Take an all day bicycle trip to Shaping and back via the old town of Xizhou. Another badly timed day out, as it rained on this day too.
3. Another bicycle trip through the paddy fields to the south of Can Cun. I met very loud Chinese tour group from Beijing who had just hired a boat on the lake, and they along with their fisherman insisted on buying me a beer and serving me some fish and chilli stew.
But after the 1-year anniversary party, it was time to move on, and I moved onto Lijiang with Claire who happened to be heading the same way.
