Like I wrote before, we did not end up staying in Kunming for very long. After a day and half in Kunming, we decided to take an overnight bus to Lijiang. Basically, Lijiang is what everyone imagines China to look like before actually coming to China. Lijiang has an extremely well preserved Old Town that has the classic winding streets and Chinese architecture (refer to the pictures).
Our bus ride from Kunming to Lijiang was absolutely awful. As soon as we got on the bus and got situated some Chinese guy came around claiming he was the manager and charged us for our luggage based on the estimated weight. The more you thought your luggage weighed, the more he would charge you. Having no idea what the deal with this guy was before he approached me, I ended up paying 100 yuan to him and was not happy afterwards. In retrospect, I should have just refused and seen what happened. Since we got an overnight bus we had beds, but the road was so bumpy I barely slept at all...even after taking some Benadryll to make me drowsy. We got in at about 5:00 a.m., got into our hostel, and promptly passed out for about 3 hours. After breakfast, we decided to explore the city a bit. The city was beautiful and a welcome departure from the hustle and bustle of the larger Chinese cities we had been traveling to. The old city (where we were most of the time) had old Chinese houses with the traditionally made roofs along winding paths barely large enough to fit one car through. There were a couple of streams going through the city with the classic arching bridges over them. Refer to the pictures for more detail, it's a little hard to describe. One great thing was that there were a lot of merchants on the streets, but none of them were nagging us at all. I could tell that in a few years Lijiang could have the potential to be an overly touristy spot, but now it's not bad at all.
There is a famous lake just outside of the Old City in Lijiang. The name escapes me at the moment but the scenery was gorgeous. It's a little hard to tell, but you can see a very large mountain in the background of one or two of the pictures. The area is well renowned as one of the most pricelessly beautiful areas in China. A stone path lead us all around the lake.
As beautiful as Lijiang was during the day, it was spectacular at night when the only light in the city came from hundreds upon hundreds of Chinese lanterns.
While the rest of our group was headed for Tiger Leaping Gorge the next day (also considered one of the greatest destinations in China), Billie and I realized we couldn't logically go there, come back to Kunming, and get back to Shijiazhuang to teach by Sunday, so we elected to go to another nearby city called Dali. I really wish we had spent more time in Lijiang, but I definitely wish we would have been able to spend more time in Dali. Dali was completely untainted as far as western or corporate businesses are concerned (i.e. McDonald's). We stayed at an amazing hostel which was run by an older Australian man. The day we got there, we decided to go on this mountain hike. It was more than a few miles but definitely worth the peace of mind garnered from it.
That night we ate dinner with an extremely nice couple from Australia and as we returned to the hostel we saw that the party had already started! We were greeted with shots of a locally made blueberry flavored liquor which was nothing like I had tasted before, but not bad at all. As we started conversing with more people we realized that most people were indeed from Australia. As the night progressed, old AC/DC music videos were projected onto the wall. I stayed up until 3:00 sitting and talking with a fairly interesting guy who had married a German woman. The Australian guy and his wife were on vacation and he was teaching English in Germany. The next day we went back to Kunming and then the day after that we went back to Beijing and then back to Shijiazhuang! What an amazing month and a half...
It's been a while (almost two months), so if I have forgotten anything on this part of the trip, I'll add it later!
Sidenote: the one time we did not book a hostel or hotel in advance throughout the entire trip was our return to Kunming before our flight to Beijing. We got there and they told us that they were booked. However, they also told us that we could stay in the employees' room. While a little strange, it was just as comfortable as the dorms (if not more comfortable considering there were two less people able to stay in the employees' room than the big dorm rooms).
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