Moving south

Today we moved south on to Dali, also in Yunnan province. It was disappointing to find that there was still on hot water when we woke. We washed using hot water from a vacuum flask and tap water.

We taxied to the bus station and found a large IVECO van heading to Dali. Kim wasn’t too happy about being in the back seats of the van and turned grumpy. He wished we had gone to the express bus station. I couldn’t pacify him by saying that we were already on our way in the van while the express bus would have departed two hours later at 1130.

It was a three hour non-smoking drive to Dali. Arriving at Dali’s old town, we got a tuk-tuk and walked a little to get to the Dali Jinhua Hotel. It was run down and grand at the same time. They required a hefty deposit of CNY200 which was just over one night’s rate.

After a short walk to orientate, we sat down to eat lunch at Café de Jack’s. Fish-flavoured eggplant and Thai fried rice.  Dali’s old town is what I call an old Chinese town, as opposed to Lijiang which I consider an old Chinese village. There were lots of local floral produce like roses and carnations, much like in Lijiang.

Text continues after this gallery.

We had a massage before dinner. Many of the staff were deaf and mute. They have signs made up for harder and softer. These signs would have been useful in non-deaf/mute places where there are foreigners who can’t communicate with the local staff. It was a very good hard massage.

We took dinner at Sunshine café. The apparent owner was an American, perhaps part-Chinese, who studied law here. It was a satisfying meal of chilli con carne, vegetable and mince bobi, beer, brownies and ice-cream. All of that washed down with two teas, cost NZD5 per head.

Along with good food, we met interesting people at dinner. There was a Slovenian couple. She studies Chinese, just like the woman I met on the train travelling from Geneva to Ljubljana in 1998. And an English couple who were moving to Sydney. The raved about Taman Negara (the original National Park) in Malaysia which I haven’t been to yet even though I’ve been to some better ones on the Borneo side of the country.

Returning to the hotel, women offered “massage” services as were walking in the hallway to our rooms. We noticed music from the CD shop downstairs stopped on-the-dot at 2200. We can sleep peace!