Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

Kunming to Dali
We got on the bust at 800AM this morning after breakfast and headed out for Dali. Its ~4 hour drive by bus thru the mountains. It took about 4.5 hours because we stopped at a couple places for gas and stretching. I knew signing up for this tour that there was gonna be a lot of time spent on the bus, many long bus drives between cities. However, I am super glad that we took bus rides. It was absolutely breathtaking. The country side, not the bus. I tried to take as many pictures of the gorgeous chinese countryside as possilbe. I can't express enuff how gorgeous it was. Words can't really describe it and my fotos thru the bus window don't do justice either.
Once we got out of Kunming City, the mountains started pretty soon. I knew right as we started out that I was not gonna want to sleep on these long bus rides from town to town. We passed an uncountable number of small chinese mountain villages. This is the China you saw in text books growing up: The small communities, old traditions, and old style architecture. There was lots of earthy reds contrasting wiht the faded black roofs of stone or slate. Each house looked as if it was packed onto or next to another. There seemed to be no real formulated layout as to where to build houses. Just throw a house out and see where it lands. The houses would follow the slope of the mountain or where they terraformed the mountainside. This made it look as the house had grown out of the grown because some thin patches of wheat? were growing on some roofs.
Speaking of Terraforming Mars Now!, the terraforming of the mountains just added more to the view. With its crops, it added nice contrasting vibrant greens and yellows to a landscape dominated by reds, browns, greys, and blacks. The occasional small lake or pond at the bottom of the hillsides added even more.
While taking fotos, I had trouble with the road, trees lining the road, bumps on the road, bus windown, and low level light conditinos (it was overcast and sprinkling off and on) causing blurred or crappy fotos. I wish I had a special panorama mount for the side of the bus. We stopped off at one SINOPEC to gas up and stretch arond 930AM. We stopped again at 11AM to stretch. At the second stop, I tried to call Yumi in Japan for Valentine's Day. I got an answering machine with someone talking all Samurai like. I asumed it to be Yumi's Japanese cellfone so I left a message. The damn thing cut me off. We headed off towards Dali again.
We had to climb higher up in the mountains on a secondary road because they were creating a bigger road. It wasn't bad like it would be in the US because there was barely any other vehicles driving thru the mountains. The occasional tourbus, van, pickup truck. We would always get stuck behind a hauler moving at a snail's pace. It would take forever to get thru the mountains at that speed. Oh, the chinese like to pass on curves, especially when they can't see around them. I can't count the number of times he passed people on curves or whnen he would pull out in front of oncoming traffice. Aiya.
The higher we got in the Mts, the more spectacular the views got. Passing over bridges stretching across deep ravines that flowed into countryside sprinkled with small villages, amazing. At one point we were coming around the bend from one part of the mtside and we drove right into the clouds. The mtside across the gap from us was blanketed in clouds. We couldn't see below the bridges. Fantastic. We then entered a tunnel that took us thru a mt. We come out and there were still clouds all around.
We finally arrived at the Modern Dali City and headed straight for lunch. It was sprinkling. I called Yumi after lunch and left another meessage and got cut off again. DAMNIT! So much food. Damn MSG!
We took the bus around the city and we drove to a sightseeing place by the sea. It had raied here hard yesterday or so. This is where we met another Zhongshan tourgroup. A few of us walked to the pier and looked at the sea. It was a very muddy walk. Eeeew, the bus driver is gonna yell at me. The mud was yellow and red. Chinese like the chinese flag! I got to the end of the pier and took a panorama of the city and mts across the sea: 14 shots i think. We then walked back. By the time we got back to the buses, it started raining a bit harder.
We headed to Dali's Old City. What a beauty. ~1000 years old. The buildings looked their age but the interior was all modern updating. Very interesting contrast. It was raining muhc harder and got real windy. We drove thru part of the city and got to one of the 4 direction gates. we went to the top of the hall that was an overlook of the city, it also contained a stage for viewing of Traditional Dali Dance and Music while having traditional snacks. The outfits worn by this chinese minority are very cool and pretty. I like the headdresses worn by the women. I videotaped all the performances. The actual dances and songs I thought were pretty lame, but hey, decide yourself. The best part of the show is when they asked audience members the ingredients of a soup-drink. I was the only white folk there and the Sucka MC came over to ask me about the drink. She started spouting off in Putonghua and I was like, "Wo bu dong." :D That got a laff out of the surrounding chinese. She asked a few others. Those who got it right got to go on stage and learn a dance. Chen, the guy I sit next to on the bus and father of Kevin, got to go on stage. It was quite humorous.
After the show was over, we headed to this famous Dali Rock shop. It was another of those government forced visits. This is how the tourist trade works here: They take rocks from the mts and turn them into all sorts of things. Statues, chairs, chess pieces, vases, and they take slabs of rock and frame them. Sounds dumb, but this stuff if very pretty. Of course, its uber-expensive in the shop because the people need to make commissions. Of course there were lots of things I wanted bu then I thought: 1. where the hell am I gonna put it? 2. How am I gonna get it home? 3. Whats its use? -Nothing. Basically its just prettty junk thats useless. Just another thing to lug around and collect dust. Another thing to clean and I had enuff of that B.S. as a kid to last me five lifetimes. I wanted those chinese chess pieces though. They were 100RMB, but the people wouldn't haggle. I will wait to see if I find them at a street vendors by the city.
As I entered the shop, a saleswoman was assigned to me. I had a young attractive maiden (because an old ugly widow wouldn't be able to sell as well) fixed to me on a 2 foot leash tied at the waist. This girl walked up to me from the buffett line and just started talking to me like I was chinese. I smiled a nice "Wo bu dong". I then headed off to look at stuff. I noticed that she was following me around. Everything I looked at, she would come up and start telling me about it. "Lady, do you see that I am white and have no idea what your saying, or are you so drilled in what you are saying that it doesn't register?" :D After many minutes of looking around and having her speak to me after I continuously tell her "Wo bu dong" i decided give her a taste of her own medicine. I began speaking to her in English, "What rock is this. How much is this? Oooh, what is the significance of this Buddha statuette? Have you ever watched Star Trek? You know, you shouldn't waste your time on me. I don't plan on buying anything. See how it feels when you can't understand. You're a pretty girl but it just wouldn't work out between us. I am a white devil and you are a chinese woman. Chinese women are crazy. I have never met and gotten to know well a stable chinese woman. I am sure they are somwehere but I have never met one." After I finished talking to her and finding that that didn't work, I was like, Screw it! I am gonna lose here. I performed many Pick N Rolls and Duck N Covers, but this girl was on my ass like toilet paper on a shoe. After a bit of travelling around and looking at all the junk, I think she realized to cut her losses and move on.
After the rock shop, we drove the bus to Foreigner's St, which is a commmercial area of Old Dali with bars n stuff and some western food. The name misleads you though, I only saw two other foreigners. It was raining lightly and I paired up with Golf. Despite it being "Foreigner's St.", it was still old school. We walked around together and took lots of fotos. Golf is a photophile as well. We went into back alleys and took fotos. After about 30 minutes, it stopped raining and the sun tried to come out. It was coming out over on the opposing mountains across the horizon, but the moutnain we were next to had this forboding black cloud trapped against the mountain and it would not leave. We were to meet the group at a certain area but we got lost. we easily found our way thou. It was at this point that I tried to call the ZTG to get our bairings and found out that I sucked up all my minutes/money tryin to call Japan. Shoot.
On our way back to the bus, it started to sprinkle again. While running thru the street I found a vendor selling those chess pieces for ~70RMB. I was able to talk her down to 50. She relented as we turned away. Kool. They are heavy. We then sat in the bus for awhile because the bus had gotten stuck in a corner with many other buses. We headed to dinner when we got done. It was a packed 4 story place with very slippery stairs.
from dinner we went to the hotel. Absolutely gorgeous. There were 3 large Stupas/Pagodas lit up in the nite sky and the layout an location of the hotel was superb, see the fotos.
After unpacking ,a few of us went into the old city. WE took fotos together posing with flowers because of V-Day. Goofing around n stuff. A couple had rented out a bar and covered the floor with rose petals and lit the place up with candles. All the girls in our group were standing around by the door just waiting to catch a glimpse of the couple and oogle at the lack of male testosterone. ;-) LEAVE THEM BE!
As they stood around doing nothing and wishing they had a boyfriend that would do the same, I walked around and played with a dog, had my fotos put onto a CD-R, tried to buy a card for fone minutes but a Yunnan card wouldn't work on a Zhongshan fone. God forbid a traveller may need to put money on his fone in another province. I found some funny graffiti on a wall.
We R Muppets
No Celine Dion
(obviously written by foreigners)
And to send the message home, an elevator version of Celine Dion's "My Heart will Go on" was playing over a speaker. ugh.
In an antique shop i found some old swords. Real ones. Three old rusted out and bent katanas. One was actually nice even though it was bent up. I should have gotten it, I think he wanted 300RMB. There was also this bad ass heavy chinese sword. It was double bladed and it was real, but it was dusted, rusted, and bent up. But classy. The guy told me it cost 1600RMB and I laughed for about 1 minute in his face. I told him 500RMB and he kicked me out of the store. It must have weighed 15 pounds. I wanted it.
We goofed around then headed back to the hotel and slept. They turned off the pagoda lites. CRAP! I anted to get some nite shots. phoeey. Good nite everyone.