World China Yunnan Dali

Where am I now?

Dali - "where theres poo theres hope" Sep 25, 2009

I have literally just arrived in Dali after a 4-5 hour coach ride from Kunming. I sat next to a Chinese guy the whole way and then, after 5 hours in silence, I asked him where we were on a map. He tells me and asks if I'm going to old Dali (they call a big horrible city next to Dali, Dali on bus schedules) then offers me a lift to my hostel as his mum was waiting to pick him up! Now I know this sounds dodgy and I was abit reluctant but then I saw two old Chinese people waiting for him in a car and he seemed very genuine. It turns out his mum manages a hotel about 100 metres from my hostel! Anyway, the dude proceeds to drop his parents off and take me for a quick driven tour of Dali. The whole thing was pretty crazy but I'm glad I said yes. I'm consisting walking down there another time and seeing if he wants to get some food. His English was okay, good enough!

The hostel itself is unbeliebvable, I'm a little bit in awe of it. I'm used to hostels being quite nice [ better than you'd think i imagine ] but this is like a hotel. The only downside is that everyone seems to have their own small groups already. It seems most are either non-english or a little bit older than me so we'll see how it goes. If anything, ive had it pretty good for the whole of China - in terms of meeting people - so i guess this was bound to happen. I was expecting this in Laos too. Dali is very nice although at the moment it is wet and misty; it reminds me abit of England actually. I've been told the mountains are very beautiful but at the moment they are just shadows looming over the town.

I just wrote a fairly sizable entry but then the website crashed and i lost it so it shall remain lost untill i can be bothered to rewrite it. In a nutshell;

- bumped into my Quebec friends again

- met really great aussy couple

- climbed a mountain one day

('where theres poo theres hope' refers to when we were unsure the route we were taking was the right one but when we were confronted by the large amount of horse poo on the trail we felt we were on the right path)

- rained alot the next

- ate two great dinners

I am back in Kunming and have a 12 hour bus ticket to Mengla this evening. Next blog should hopefully be from Laos