The overnight bus proved to be the most exciting part of the trip. We hopped onto the bus about an hour before departure and we saw that not only were my parents, as my dad noted, "the oldest people on the bus," but they were also, as my mom noted, "the only old people on the bus." I remember this distinction clearly because my mom corrected my dad's observation on at least two separate occasions. I believe that this was mom's passive-aggressive way of saying, "I don't think that dad and I really belong(ed) on the bus."
Mom was probably right to correct dad for two reasons. One, the next youngest person on the bus was probably 20 years younger than she was, and two, that night was, without a doubt, the bumpiest sleeping experience that I have ever endured. Actually, writing that last sentence made me smile a bit. I mean think about it: when was the last time that you used the adjective "bumpy" to describe the experience of sleeping. Probably never. And there's a good reason for that. To illustrate the reason, I'll paint a little visual picture for you. You're lying in your bed, eyes closed, hugging your day pack with your valuables stored safely within (more on that later), with the soothing hum of a bus engine lulling you to sleep. You close your eyes and you start to drift off. Sinking deeper, deeper into a calm and soothing – HOLY CRAP! YOU'RE IN THE AIR! In fact you've bounced so high that you almost cleared the guard rail in your bunk and dropped 4 feet to the aisle that is narrower than your shoulders. The adrenaline rush has, in less than one second, brought you to a state of alertness that the strongest cup of coffee you can imagine couldn't hope to match. But on the bright side, since you are awake, it doesn't really matter anymore that you're continuing to bounce around like an ant riding on the back of a happy Chihuahua. You can now hold on to that guard rail – the one that you almost cleared a few seconds ago.
As if that weren't enough to keep me up, my parents had read in our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook that, from time to time, traveler's bags get cut with razors or stolen from the overnight busses. Hence, my paranoia began to kick in. I was able to remove all of my expensive stuff from the large backpack and fit it into my small day pack, which I literally cuddled with throughout the night. However, even that didn't give me peace of mind. My backpack was tucked way out of sight underneath the bus. That wouldn't have been a major problem but for two issues. First, and most importantly, there is only one drawback to having a high-quality, comfortable backpack: it is worth more than all of the stuff inside of it. Hence, you do not want it to get hurt or stolen. Second, Chinese bus drivers have this inexplicable tendency to stop the bus for 10 to 30 minutes every 200 miles or so. To my paranoid mind, 10 to 30 minutes was just enough time for thieves to show up, open the bag compartment, look for the nicest bag in there (mine), and run off with it after razoring my parents bags just to spite me for being a cheep son that brought ("the only") old people onto the bumpy, impossible-to-sleep-on overnight bus. So long story short, I was up not only as a result of periodic, momentary hovering above my bed, but also as result of my neurotic need to watch the luggage compartment whenever the driver needed to relieve himself, elevate the nicotine content in his blood, or just stand around for 20 minutes.
All of the worrying was for naught because we, and our bags, arrived safe and sound the next morning in Lijiang. We found a very pleasant courtyard hotel and spent the morning recovering from our tough night on the road. In the afternoon, my dad and I took a walk through Lijiang's old city (see the photos - full Yunnan album here - for pictures of the cobblestone streets, ancient architecture and interconnected alleyways) before meeting my mom for dinner and going to bed.
As a quick note: the remainder of links in this post will point directly to individual photos, so you can follow my descriptions while looking at images.
During our next day, I rented a bike and my parents rented a scooter to take a trip to the town of Baisha , about 20 kilometers (~12 miles) outside of Lijiang. The town is supposed to be famous for the ancient frescos on the walls of the courtyard homes. However, after walking through the entire town, we only saw two "frescos" which looked like they had been painted in the early 2000s. It was a bit disappointing, but the bike ride was still fun.
When we returned home, we met Jaques (a South African) and Paula (a Polish girl) who decided to share a car with us the next day on our trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We took off at nine in the morning and within three hours we had arrived at the Gorge. As my dad described it in his email:
The name [Tiger Leaping Gorge] comes from a story of a tiger being hunted that escapes by leaping from stone to stone over a gorge on the Yangtze River. The river actually looks like a massive Starbucks mocha. It is heavily laden with silt and narrows in the gorge to a frothing, splashing surge of water
In addition to his description, I would add that in order to arrive at the key scenic spot one must pass through a series of man-made caves that are quite cool. Also, the surrounding mountains are gorgeous (Was that a pun? I think so.).
On the way back to Lijiang we had an interesting experience with food. We stopped at a restaurant which didn't have a menu. In lieu of that, we walked into a room full of vegetables and pointed at what we wanted. I was a little suspicious of the situation because I've been living in China for 3 years now and I've only once been to a restaurant that had no menu (it was a bed and breakfast) , but we were feeling adventurous so we decided to stay. We selected our vegetables and asked about meat. The fish were too expensive, but the chicken was cheap. We opted for the chicken, saying we wanted a little one. A minute later, a girl walked in with a live and fully-feathered chicken flapping its wings . The girl weighed the chicken and it quickly became apparent that she was planning to kill it right in front of our eyes, which upset our friend Paula a bit. Luckily we stopped the girl before the killing began and she took it to another room so that the meat eaters in the room could continue to compartmentalize the living chickens and the delicious meat without ever having to visually connect the two thoughts. After we had ordered, we patiently awaited our food. The vegetable dishes came first and everybody seemed to enjoy them. Then the chicken dishes came. That was a bit different.
If you're sensitive to verbal imagery, you might want to skip this paragraph because I'm going to describe how the chicken was probably prepared. The bird arrived in two separate dishes: one with vegetables and one with soup. When we saw the Chicken it wasn't quite like what we imagined it would be. Essentially, it seemed that, after killing the chicken, the preparers plucked its feathers, laid it onto a cutting board, and chopped it up with a meat clever, which cleaved off successive slices from head to foot. Hence, the remaining product was cross-sections of the chicken, with all of the skin, meat, bone, and blood vessels which one could easily see and easily feel in one's mouth when biting or chewing. The meat eaters were clearly disgusted by the non-vegetarian food, but when asked by our guide about the quality, they politely and euphemistically described the food as "unusual." Sometimes it's good to be a vegetarian .
With that experience under our belts, we were ready to move on to our next location: Dali. The old city of Dali is an ancient walled city which, over the years, has become a haven for backpackers who travel through China. To the east of the city is Erhai lake and to the west are the towering Jade Green Mountains. It's got everything except the ocean, and it's beautiful.
Almost as soon as we arrived in the old city, we ran into a British woman and an American woman. We asked them how far away the center of town was. They explained it wasn't very far and then politely told us that they were the owners of a brand new guest house which was located just around the corner from where we currently were. I think that after the chicken experience and the resulting gastrointestinal discomfort, my dad was longing for home and excited to be interacting with English speakers, so he jumped at the opportunity. We ended up staying all four nights in that location: the Sleepy Fish . This turned out to be a good decision because the place was clean and quiet, and the women who ran the place were extremely funny and interesting. Oh, and we also found a little pet.
The Dali portion of the trip was mostly about relaxing and recharging, but there were three highlights. The first was taking a day trip with a hired driver. Our final destination was a market, but on the way we had the driver show us around the villages surrounding Dali. We saw people drying fish on the streets, took a walk on a peninsula that juts out into Erhai lake, drove through narrow alleys of the villages, and visited a tie-dye factory. Each of those experiences had its unique local flair, and it was a truly fun time (which was a good thing, because when we finally arrived at our final destination, the market, it was kinda lame).
The second excellent experience was an 11Km (~6.5 mile) hike along a path on top of the Jade Green Mountains. We got to ride a chair lift to the top of the mountain and a cable car down. In between those two rides was pure beauty (the pictures begin here and you can click through until you see the gecko). The views were the coolest part of this experience, so I won't describe it any further.
The final Dali highlight was the bike trip that I took with my dad (mom couldn't bike because her hip was recovering from surgery) to some of the sights and villages around Dali. We were constantly worried that it was going to rain, but we ended up completely dry throughout the whole trip. This was good because riding bikes through the narrow and labyrinthine alleys of ancient Chinese mountain and lakeside villages gave us views of day-to-day life in a setting much more rural than Beijing and tourist cities. Biking past a small village market; seeing young boys climbing into and out of parked boats and searching for frogs; watching a "traffic jam" that involved only one car, a bicycle and a few pedestrians in a narrow alley: these were things that we just could not see if we just visiting tourist traps, and they were some of the more interesting sights that I saw throughout the whole trip. (Pictures of the bike trip begin here and end just before the picture of the people at the monastery burning incense.)
After finishing in Dali, we took a bus to Kunming and spent our final day there. We had a very relaxing day. We walked through a park on the evening of the first day. After sleeping in until about 11:00am, we had brunch, visited a preserved monastery and then finished the afternoon walking through the Kunming zoo (not a bad zoo - I rarely felt depressed about the animal's living conditions). Following that, we had our last meal in Yunnan, which happened to be western - like almost all of the meals that we had after the chicken experience - and we caught our flight back to Beijing.
My parents' remaining two days in Beijing were a whirlwind tour. My parents met my ex-bosses and my team members from HighTeam; we went shopping, and we packed a bunch of clothing and books that I would send home with my parents in extra suitcases. At the end of all of the travel and guiding, I was exhausted, but it was an amazing trip. I'm extremely happy that I was able to spend the time with my parents.
This has become a huge, huge post, and I don't think you want to read about me wrapping up loose ends and closing out my apartment, so I'll leave it here. On Monday, July 13, I'll be taking the night train to Xi'an and I'll be posting periodically about my experiences there and on the road after that.
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