Michelle says hi…
This is Michelle hi-jacking Phil’s blog for a while. We are still in Dali for one last day.
Dali (nothing to do with Salvador Dali, its just a phonetic translation of the chinese name) is an awesome place consisting of an ancient town and a new town. The ancient town is where were at. It’s sandwiched between a lake named Erhai lake (due to its shape looking like an ear) and Cangshan mountains. Quite a few minority groups live in this area. The most prominent are the Bai people. They are highly spiritual and practise Buddhism, they have awesome murals and pictures on their houses. We took a cable car up the mighty mountains half way yesterday. I was actually pretty scared.. 1) chinese engineering 2) I was very high up above the mountains 3) the wind was blowing the cable car around 4) I’m a wuss. Getting off, we were amazed by the views. Yes the scary cable car ride was worth it. (apparently our guide said that another guide had brought an older woman up a while ago in her 70s and she cried the whole way cos she was so scared!)
Did a 12k walk around the side of the mountains, at some points there were no fences.. dodgy… but there beautiful views! Im sure Phil will post some pics at a later date. You could definitely feel the altitude, climbing the same number of steps at sea level wouldn’t send your heart beating as much and be as out of breath.
We took a chair lift down and that took about 15 minutes… meanwhile a ladybug flew onto me and hung out with us for a little while. That was pretty magical. Then it just flew away into the trees. Phil says it was good luck.. i hope so :)
After a big hike, we needed a well deserved massage! Phil got a whole body massage for 120 yuan (20 AUD!) and I got a foot masssage (that included brief, calves, shoulder, back, neck and arm massage too for 80 yuan (13AUD) such a bargain!!! Oh and they both went for an hour!
Anyway off to check out some markets held by the Bai people in the villages… :)
