Keep on truckin'

Day 8: Dali to Lijiang

Basically today consisted of traveling. It was alright, though, and there was this precious little girl on the bus with us. Her Dad was playing all these Chinese kids' games with her, and she never stopped smiling. She also sang for everyone, and had this really sweet voice. It was great! We got to Lijiang and hiked a ways from the bus stop to the old town. This old town was *really* neat. By that I mean that I loved the buildings and the layout and the stream/small river running through it. Unfortunately, everything was more expensive and the vendors weren't quite as friendly as in Dali. We danced with some people in the main square after dark, and got to meet a few other fellow travellers (foreign and Chinese). The streets are all kind of cobbled, and the buildings are all hundreds of years old with these awesome old Chinese doors. Our little hostel was in a 200-yr-old building. Way cool!!

Day 9: Yulong xueshan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain)

This was AWESOME. One of the things I really miss in China is just being away from people. Here was the chance for that. We took a cable car up to this big meadow on the side of this really famous (in these parts) mountain. We hiked around the meadow for a while and into some woods (even though we weren't supposed to wander off the path -- we're such rebels!). Oh, it was just incredible. After we finished hiking we all decided to be silly and dress up in some of their "traditional" costumes -- Tibetan style, almost (we're not terribly far from Tibet) -- and take some pictures. That was fun. Then we went back to Lijiang. That was an adventure....so on the way into the park, we were riding with this lady driver who was pretty nice (and she had a great car, I really wanted to drive it), but she wanted some of us to hide so she could get us a better discount on getting in (and so she could make a little moolah). That was a little shady, but yes we did it. Then on the way back we missed one of the last buses from the mountain top, so we had to make a deal with one of the guys who lives up there and owns a jeep to take us back down. It was more expensive than we wanted, but we didn't have a whole lot of options. It was a great day though. Oh, and I got to try yak's milk and yak's meat.

Day 10: Lijiang to Shangri-la (Xiang ge li la)

This morning when I woke up I walked around the old town of Lijiang a bit. I had really wanted to do that, because most of the time we were walking around at night, and couldn't really see much. It was great, too, because there weren't a lot of people out and the stores were mostly closed so you could see all the old doors and everything. I really enjoyed that. Then we went to this park called Black Dragon Pool Park (Heilongtan Gongyuan) -- pretty neat considering Tai'an also has a Black Dragon Pool. I thought I was in Yunnan??? The park was really nice, really well-maintained and everything. The water in the pool was really clear -- you could actually see the bottom of it! There was a really famous pavilion called the "five-phoenix" pavilion (if you look at the corners of the roof, you can see these points that are supposed to look like phoenixes), and there was a center for researching the Dongba culture. (Mostly a religion somewhere between Buddhism and Daoism) In the afternoon we hopped on a bus to Shangri-la, where we are now. I wasn't sure what to expect here. Apparently there's not too much to do, but it's kind of a seat of Tibetan culture outside of Tibet. Tomorrow we're going to see more of the area and then head to the GORGE where we will get to hike around for a bit. Yay! Also, I've decided I really like yak meat. We had it in a Tibetan-style dish tonight, and it was SOOOOOO delicious! They also know how to cook their broccoli. More to come, of course!