Dali old town is an interesting place. It is home to the Bai people, who have developed their own cultural and architectural styles compared to the Naxi people of Lijiang. The old town is smitten with bars (geared towards foreigners), cozy coffee shops and delicious little stores with local dishes. On the flip side, there’s several schools in the area and every so often you’d see a rush of students overwhelming the streets buying snacks! Dali is also home to one of the early churches built by Catholic missionaries, and despite it being a Catholic church, it was built in the local architectural style. Continue reading →

Two days was enough for us in one place, especially when the place sort of looks like the place you were last time, and the place before that as well….

The night before, we ventured further out of the old town and came across this beautifully designed hotel, and as we peeked around we discovered they served Western-style breakfast!! We ordered ourselves two breakfasts and thought we’d have a good meal before we left.

The hotel is Bivou (www.bivou.com), and the hotel owner was a young Singaporean, speaking eloquently and probably well-educated as she passionately discussed the area and its native Naxi people. The hotel was designed meticulously fusing the local architectural aspects with modern chic, and each suite has a slightly different flavour. Best part was their own courtyard which they grew fresh herbs and spices! The breakfast was great, too! Continue reading →

Day 112: Shuhe (束河) – October 7th

Another day in another ancient city, another day spent wandering the streets for a bit before sitting down for a cup of coffee and reading books for the afternoon. This type of routine is relaxing, but considering the lack of stress we’ve been receiving for the past 3 months, this isn’t quite what we need. Then again, we’re not complaining… =)

Today was a mirror image of yesterday, and we watched another great movie. This time it was a French movie, “Papillon”, about an old man and a young girl going out to find butterflies… cute story!

Not too fond of Lijiang’s hustle and bustle style of tourism and overpriced beers, we decided to switch spots and move to another part of Lijiang’s ancient town, Shuhe (束河). It’s only a short ride, but the amount of tourists per square metre decreases by more than half! We’re starting to understand how to convert ancient towns into a tourist magnet, and here’s our checklist

1. Take an existing area with flourishing native people
2. Import a lot of artists/craftsmen to setup shops selling their wares
3. Rich, possibly well-educated young people flock in to open cozy coffee shops, antique stores and boutique hotels

And pretty soon, once this place becomes ‘popular’ there’s no turning back, as there’s just too many people in China.

Shuhe is pretty neat, as it still offers all of Lijiang’s touristy things while retaining quite a bit of the original local flavour. For one, there are still plots of farmland smack dab in the middle of the tourist area, where you can see locals growing crops! Strange, but it’s neat. Continue reading →

Wandering around the old town of Lijiang, it feels almost like a dream come true for all tourists. Built at the foothills of Yulong Glacier Mountain, the area is sculpted around a series of flowing rivers, stone bridges and built over the heritage of local Naxi people. Stores are all meticulously designed from their catchy names, to their crafts and wares. Coffee shops all use neatly designed cups, with cozy handcrafted goods or ‘artifacts’ from local Naxi people. Almost everything looks so magical, it’s like a tourist heaven made by Walt Disney! Continue reading →

Deciding in the morning that we didn’t really want to continue paying outrageous prices to stay in an uninteresting place, we decided to pack and move on to the next stop along the road to Kunming. The next stop is the even more popular destination, the ancient town of Lijiang.

We took a 1pm bus, and despite it being only a 174km, with severe traffic it was more parking lot than anything, and we eventually got arrived in Lijiang at 8pm, about twice as long as what it should’ve been.

The Ancient Town of Lijiang, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a much better place than Shangri-La, even if it was my first impression. The town is much bigger than most places we’ve been, and the old town is only a small portion of it. We managed to find a hostel and reserved a room despite it being ridiculously busy season. Grabbing a typical bowl of yunnan rice noodles, we headed to the hostel and slept.

One thing we we have to say, is that the hostels in China are spectacular. Clean rooms, friendly prices and coziness is almost mandatory, but they also have spacious common areas for beers and meeting friends. The best part, is they all have their own ‘selling points’, and are decorated fabulously. Compared with hostels in Canada, where it feels a comfy cottage exterior with an hospital-like interior with no points at all for coziness or comfort. Next time anyone travels in China, we highly recommend staying at any hostels!!

The old town of Shangri-La is MUCH better than the new town. That being said, it was still a bit touristy, with ‘local specialties’ such as yak jerky, Tibetan knives and other tourist-trap goods every other store. Within though, there were quite a few gems of neat little handicraft stores and coffee shops. Our favorite though, was definitely Helen’s Pizzeria, where we stopped for lunch. The owner is an extremely nice Italian man who married a Naxi-local and decided to stay. Everything was made in house, the pizza dough, the tagliatelle, the tomato sauce, even the gelato! We had a long awaited Italian meal..delicious! Washing the pizza down with a strong Lavazza coffee and finishing off with a slice of cake + scoops of gelato, it definitely hit the spot. Continue reading →

Saying farewell to the comforts of Salt Well, we hit the road again with an 8am bus into Yunnan province to the town of Deqen. This region is famous for its 梅里mountain range, with a small town built off the side of the cliff right before Deqen, dedicated to anyone wanting a spectacular view.

Note: Meili Mountain is one of the four sacred mountains in Tibetan culture, and it is said that if the moment you enter Deqen and you can see the full view of the whole mountain range without cover, you would have good luck for a year!!

We weren’t super lucky, but the mountain-gods were good enough to us and the clouds miraculously opened up a small window for us to see the tallest peak of the ranges, Kawakarpo (卡瓦格博)!!! So we still feel that we’re going to get some good luck =) Continue reading →