For our full day in Zhongdian we all went off to a Buddhist temple in the morning… not before stopping off for a quick yak ride though! Michelle was a bit disgusted at the way the owner pulled the yak around by a nose ring, and Jo (the only other person on the tour) was the only one brave (or foolish?) enough to go for a ride. She said that it smells even worse than it looks, but the owner was having a great time regardless and burst into song.

Shenanigans aside, we headed to the temple. You are not allowed to take photos inside any of the many temples in the sprawling complex, so you will have to make do with some exterior shots. The place was pretty cool, but not being very religious myself I didn’t get involved in any of the ceremonies or make any donations. We spotted one monk sorting through donation money (they even give change) and he had a huge wad of cash. They obviously don’t need my assistance!

In this particular branch of Buddhism (yellow? I can’t remember) the monks are allowed to eat meat, they have their own cars and mobile phones, and they are allowed to leave the order at any time. It kinda sounded like Buddhism Lite, but I guess it attracts the young people!

We are back in Kunming again, and although we had no internet last time, I managed to find a network cable when I was hunting around for some lost papers. A little more investigation revealed a network port previously hidden. Best of all, this being a large city it has the fastest internet connection yet! We plan on making the most of it before we head off to Beijing tomorrow.

Today’s photos were taken on the way to Zhongdian, a small city (still 1 million people!) in Yunnan that borders onto Tibet. In fact, 90% of the population are Tibetan. It is about 3,500m above sea level and has been known to cause altitude sickness. Michelle was still feeling a bit ropey from her food poisoning and she slept most of the way there.

Zhongdian was renamed Shangrila in 2001 or so in an effort to boost tourism. It doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on the Chinese tourists, though, as this was the most relaxed and tourist-free city on our trip. Once again we stayed in the old town, but unlike Lijiang most of the shops were actually locals selling local products. And one of those products is yak.

I had been keen to try yak meat ever since I saw the dried yak meat shops in Lijiang. Our guide, Benny, told me there would be plenty in Shangrila, and she was right! The first meal we had I ordered yak cooked with hot rocks. It was delicious! Unfortunately, the other yak dishes I had didn’t really compare, but we ended up back in the same restaurant on the last night, so I got to have it again.

By the time we left I had tried stone cooked yak, curry yak, stewed yak, yak in noodle soup, yak butter tea and yak yoghurt. Michelle was alternating between telling me I was sprouting horns and that I was growing yak fur. I could have used the fur, though, as it was pretty damned cold! The hotels require a smart card to be inserted to keep the power on, so as soon as we left our room the aircon and electric blanket would turn off.

We figured out a solution though and were able to thoroughly enjoy our time there. Michelle was feeling better each day and was back to her usual self by the time we landed in Kunming, asking where we were going for lunch almost as soon as we touched down.

This is the third attempt to get this uploaded. I told you the internet was flaky!

Here are a few photos from our day in Lijiang. I skipped a day because we didn’t do a lot when we arrived and we both got sick here. I had a nasty sore throat and head cold when we arrived, but as I was getting better Michelle got sick from suspected food poisoning and spent most of the evening in the bathroom being sick.

We still managed to check out a bit of the town. It is a bit more old-worldy than Dali, with narrow winding streets and old buildings, but it is a lot more touristy. There seems to only be about half a dozen different shops and they are repeated everywhere… yak meat shop, scarf shop, shoe shop, bag shop, music shop, rinse, repeat. They all seem to play the same music too, which drove Michelle insane. The tight streets also mean you can’t avoid the tour groups. They move at glacial pace, and being China no one gets out of your way. When Michelle was feeling ill and we had to get back to the hotel in a hurry we were barging and pushing our way through. I don’t know the Chinese word for ‘excuse me’, but apparently it didn’t matter as no one uses it anyway.

We are just getting ready to leave Zhongdian (Shangrila) so you might be wondering where all the photos have gone? Well, it hasn’t been from lack of trying! The wireless internet here is as reliable as…. well, a very unreliable thing. I’ll try and put a quick update here after breakfast, but I make no proimises!

Okay, last update then I really have to pack my bag.

After leaving Lake Erhai we stopped in a a place that does tie dye. I never really understood how the process worked, so seeing the cloth being tied and then dyed (duh) was actually pretty rad. Some of the patterns were pretty awesome, and we left the place with a new tablecloth!

Last stop for us was to see the three pagodas at a temple on the edge of town. The entrance fee is extortionate, so we were content with hanging out front andtaking some photos for free (even if we had to wait an age for a group of businessmen to finish taking theirs first).

It’s getting later and later and I have still got to pack my bags for tomorrow! Here are a bunch of photos taken around Lake Erhai and inside a crazy house that is owned by a friend of our driver. The owner is a famous artist, and designed the house himself. A local architect took his drawing and turned them into plans so the house could be built. It is a pretty spectacular building, and being Chinese, it has very little in the way of safety. The top deck is several stories off the ground, but has no railings at all. There are stairs that run up the outside, but the railings there are only at ankle height. It does mean that there is nothing getting in the way of the view, but it does give you a bit of vertigo when you are up there.

Well, I am way behind now! We are currently spending our last night in Lijiang before we head off to Zhongdian (Shangri La) tomorrow. Since I last updated I caught a nasty cold, so I didn’t feel like updating the blog even though we have had the most consistently reliable internet connection here.

I am going to break up our last day in Dali into a few posts, as we packed a lot in and it was too hard picking just 10 photos. First up we have some photos taken at a couple of markets in villages near lake Erhai. The locals were harvesting broad beans and were laying them out to dry on the roads. They would let vehicles run over the stalks to crush out the moisture and break open the pods. They would then sift out the beans at the end. It is quite a clever idea, but after seeing trucks spewing out diesel smoke all over the place I am not quite sure how hygienic it all is!

Michelle already jumped on here and explained what we got up to yesterday, so here’s some photos to go along with it. These were all taken in/on the Cangshan ranges, along the Cloudy Tourist path.

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… :)