2005/1/11: Dali to Lijiang

10:00 Breakfast Buns

These Dali buns are big - white puffy steamed buns and we just don't know what to ask for. Seems like the vendors mix up the repretoire each day. This one place is a market one block east from the main strip (Fuxian Lu), a few blocks north of the Old Dali center square. Buns are 0.5 yuan each, best was a sweet sesame paste stuffing.

Shoe Shyster

You really want to steer clear of the leather workers who congregate around the China Agriculture Bank just north of the Old Dali town center. What they say will be a quick 4 yuan shoe polish turns into a trick 100 yuan workover. We ended up just walking.

Lunch

More Mii Xian - Does Yunnan offer anything else?

15:00 Bus to Lijiang (Well, Almost)

Fitting dentures at an open-market dentist

Every ticket agent in Dali has a photo of a huge Volvo tour bus, propped up on the ticket desk. This is what they tempt you with. Everyone told us the busses to Lijiang left daily from the West gate (where we had gone for the Xiaping Market mini bus). We went up there but no way, no Volvo busses, no Lijiang busses at all. We "missed" two specific bus times, spent about another 30 minutes franticly running back and forth, went back to the Tibet Lodge travel desk to ask again, but it became clear the whole get-there-yourself Volvo thing was a myth. We gave up.

Just across from the Old Dali West gate was a market - the lunar market on the 2nd, 9th, etc. This market was a little more "town" and less "country" than Xiaping had been. Two more dentists with foot-powered drills.

Finally, we walked back into Old Dali to find a travel agent offering a turnkey deal - they'll sell you a ticket that includes a car ride directly to the actual bus. The small bus would be 35 yuan to Lijiang, and a big bus 50 yuan. We took the big bus deal with the free car ride. While waiting around at the bus agent, we met Per and Ivey, a Norway/Hong Kong pair also making the trip to Lijiang.

Old LiJiang at night, from the highest hotel in town

After a 3.5 hour ride, the bus arrived in Lijiang at night. We didn't have hotel reservations so we tagged along with Per & Ivey, ending up at a small converted house (seems all the Lijiang hotels are converted houses now). This hotel is high up on a hillside, about 10 meters from the entrance to the famous Lijiang hilltop lookout.

We took an evening walk down the hill into the labrynth of Lijiang alley ways, snow was falling (a big change from Bangkok!).