Lijiang - Day 1

 In the morning after finally learning my lessons, I took a taxi to the bus station, had some breakfast near the station and waited for my bus. Taking the bus proved to be a good choice as I arrived in Lijiang about three hours before my train would have left Dali.

Took a taxi to the hotel, checked in and went for a walk. Lijiang’s old town was even better than Dali’s, again very commercial but that didn’t bother me. Luckily nowadays the smart phones have map apps, it would have been very easy to get lost there with all the narrow, winding streets. It was enjoyable to walk around. After a few hours walk, I ate some dumplings and went back to the hotel. In the evening I went for another walk to see what the place looked like in the evening and it was just as charming, if not even more so.

Just outside the Ancient Town there was also a statue that is not so common any more.

Dali - day 3

 On the third and final day in Dali I wanted to see the mountain behind the town. The entrance to the area was less than 2 km away from my B&B so I decided to walk there. There were actually three entrances with every one of them having a cable lift up the mountain. I decided to take the shortest one, mainly because it was the nearest. There were not many people around, this being the winter, although the Ancient City was quite crowded. The lift took about 30 minutes. On my way up, I noticed that there were graves on the hillside. I thought this was quite strange as there didn’t seem to be any paths up there. Most of the graves also looked like they hadn’t been visited for years but some seemed to have fresh flowers. Even if they were plastic flowers, they didn’t look very old so maybe there were some paths on the hillside.

Up on the mountain side I walked only a short distance, the path would have been about 6,5 km to the next cable lift but the scenery was very much what you would have seen in Finland, i.e. pine forest, so I soon turned back and went down again.

I spent the afternoon resting in my room and in the evening just had a quick walk in the town and had my dinner there.

Dali - Day 2

 

I had booked a train from Dali to Kunming for 26th of December, today being Christmas Eve. There were not many trains and mine was supposed to leave after 3 p.m. and I then began to think, that I shall be arriving to Lijiang quite late and as I really didn’t need to spend another morning in Dali on that day, I thought, I’d try to get a bus ticket.

After another rather long walk, I came to the bus depo and was able to buy a ticket that would leave 10.20 for a 3-hour trip. Now, I had had quite enough of long walks and so I hailed a taxi to take me to the Three Pagodas that are the symbol of Dali. I was on the south side of the Ancient City and the pagodas were more than a km from the north side.

The area was quite nice and there was also a temple in the same compound so I spent a couple of hours there.

The main and oldest pagoda is said to have been built 823-840 CE by king Quan Fengyou (劝丰佑) of the Nanzhao kingdom. This was the precedent of Dali kingdom and some Thai historians have claimed that it would have been Thai kingdom. This has never been proved, instead the people who lived there were Bai and Yi -people. The Bais are still a major group in Dali.

This photo I took from the temple and tried to search for its name on Google. I think, it's called trumpet tree.

I took a bus back to my hotel and rested a while before going back to the Ancient City to have a bite to eat. Again, I actually walked quite a lot in the evening, although, I had thought, that I’d just make a short trip for food. At the end of the day, I had walked about 14 km.

Dali - Day 1

I left Kunming at around 11.00 for the two hour trip to Dali by train. Lots of tunnels there as we we entering a mountainous area.

I took a bus from the railway station to the Ancient City area. This took about 40 minutes and cost RMB 3 (THB 15). I got off on the eastern side of the area and my Chinese style B&B place was on the western side. I had estimated that to walk through the city wouldn’t be too long. Again wrong estimate, it was quite a long walk and when I got to the area where my lodging was, I couldn’t find it. 

There were no street names and my app took me to the place where the B&B was supposed to be but there was another place. So I walked through the narrow streets trying to locate the right place. After more than an hour, I gave up and called the place. They told me to take a taxi there, which I then did. The taxi took me to the area where I had been, in front of the other hotel but neither did the taxi driver know, where my B&B was. So I asked him to call the place and soon a man emerged from maybe 20 meters away. So I had been very near but hadn’t seen the sign for the place.

Dali was an independent kingdom from 937 to 1254, when the Mongol armies defeated it. There are still some remnants that can be seen from that era, like the Three Pagodas.

There is also a very interesting Ancient City, very commercial but I liked the buildings there. Without this commercialism, the place most likely wouldn’t exist any more. Lots of people walking the streets but I didn’t see many westerners there.

After resting a while, I went for a walk to the Ancient City. Alltogether, I walked almost 16 km. that day.

Yunnan part 3 - Kunming 1

Kunming

I woke up to a cold morning, it was around +5 in Guangzhou had some breakfast and left the hotel. Getting to Guangzhou’s airport took quite a long time from the down town area. It’s the same, when you come from the south to the Guangzhou South railway station, everything is far away. So I left my hotel early and arrived at the airport well in advance. At the airport everything went quickly and smoothly.

I arrived at Kunming around 15.30 and after walking through a long corridor at the airport, I found the metro quite easily. It was nice and not as crowded as the Guangzhou’s metro the night before and the morning on the way to the airport. I needed to change the lines and also that was quite quick. Not like in Guangzhou or particularly in Shanghai, where you sometimes have to walk a long way when you transit from one line to another.

The problems started when I got off the metro. In my map, the hotel seemed to be only a short distance away from the metro station but I made a mistake and started going around the athletics park where it was located, instead of going through it. I finally arrived at the area, where the hotel was but still had to search for it for a while. When I finally found it, it didn’t look great and when I got in, they said, they can’t have foreigners in this hotel. So I quickly booked another hotel, which was near the railway station where my train to Dali would leave the next morning. I walked back to the metro station, this time through the park and when I got near it, I decided to take a taxi.

It proved to be a good decision although I only understood this better when I came back to Kunming on my way back to Macau. Anyway, it was a long ride because there were quite bad trafic jams but it cost me only about 8€.

The room was nice and on 30th floor with a nice view over the city. It was getting late so I didn’t feel like going anywhere. Just had a meal nearby and bought some refreshments from a supermarket in the same area.

Yunnan part 2, Guangzhou 2

 

On my way to Yunnan, I arrived earlier to Guangzhou than the previous time I was talking about. This was in the afternoon and so I had time to visit couple of more places. The first one was Chen Family Academy. I had visited this the first time during my university time in Guangzhou with a teacher and group of other students. I also remember taking some friends there later on. It had been very impressive and still was with all kinds of carving arts around the buildings.

A short visit to the Cultural Park and in that neighbourhood they also had some buildings that reminded me of the Guangzhou in late 80’s. I also had a look at the Qingping market, which used to sell all kinds of animals. It was totally different know, maybe after covid, they have cleaned these wet markets. In the old days, they would sell dogs, cats, snakes etc. For people to eat.