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July 17 Cap sur la province du Yunnan~~2个星期在云南June 13th~
I am in the Yunnan province right now, we arrived safely after a long and hardous journey..!
News from last time on:
So we went to Xijiang (西江), a big village of the Miao minority, which is located approx.150 km away from Kaili (凯里) (that is to say 3 hours bus because the max speed in mountain in 30-40 km/h...). But from Rongjiang, it took us 5 hours to get there....We were very exorsted! Then we spend the afternoon there, and it was cool because it was the market-day there!Then we were shopping and we had a nice walk around the houses, which are built on the 2 sides of the montains and in between we can also find rice fields in stairs. It was very nice! Local people are very friendly too and even their mandarin is not so great, it was enough to talk together. We spent one night there, in a guesthouse (农家乐). We paid 25 RMB (2.5 E) / person, including bathroom! The only problem was that day it was no water in the village, because they were doing some work and renovation in the street. So we did the same as the ancient time, we washed ourselves with rain water!!!!! We had dinner in the guesthouse too, and it was nice because we could stay on the big wooden balcony on the last floor. I spent myself a nice moment with the women in the kitchen, watching them cooking our dinner!!! I fell at home one more time ;) ! Then we had to find a driver to go to Kaili the next day, but it was not so easy because the roads were closed, because of the Olympics coming in this area!!!!!!!! Finally we got one and we could take off yesterday. In Kaili, Stefan and I should take a bus or a train to Guiyang to catch our flight to Kunming and my Chinese friends continued their journey to North of the Guizhou province. But the problem was that we didnt find a bus because the highway was closed (Olympics coming) and finally we took the train. Even the taxi driver we paid 550 RMB (55 E) to go to Guiyang was stopped by the police at the highway entry!!!!!!! so we went back to catch the train. Then 3 hours train later, we arrived in Guiyang, from there we caught our flight to Kunming and then we wanted to take the night train to Dali. But in the train station, we were told that all the tickets were sold out........!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was about to kill somebody when suddenly a guy coming from nowhere, proposed me to sell his 2 tickets for this train, because he changed his plan!!!!! We were fucking lucky, can I say!!!! :) So last night we were on the train, and we finally arrived in Dali this morning very early. Here the sun is shinning and we are happy to spend a day without taking any transportation!!!!!!! Our guesthouse looks like paradise for us! It is a very beautiful place whith old house, garden, pool (but empty right now..), very calm and very nice wooden decoration. 60 RMB (6 E)/ person, we are very happy!!!
Here we could also get some western food, the city is lovely and we can relax from our stressful and exorsting journey in the Guizhou province! We feel like in holidays now !!!! :) We had fresh fruit juices and milshakes the whole afternoon! and we could also use the laundry service of the guesthouse!!! Luxuous for us now !! :) We plan to stay until Monday afternoon. Here in the guesthouse, internet access is free, so i'll try to write more during these 2 days!
Tomorrow, we plan to rent bikes and go have a ride around!
June 18th~
Some fresh news from the Yunnan province! :)
So we spent 3 days in Dali, where we could recover in a fist time to continue our trip properly! :)
On Saturday, We rented 2 mountain bikes for a little tour. We first went to the 3 Pagodas. Then, on the road we found a guide which proposed some horse tour in the mountain for 30 RMB (3 E) / person! So we did it, and we could visit a little temple on the mountain. It was great! It was raining a little, but it was ok. In the evening, we found out a nice local restaurant with a cool decoration and very delicious dishes. In fact, most of the restaurant there put all the vegetables, mushrooms, fishes, etc. in front of the main door and the clients can choose by themselves what they'd like to eat! We have a nice time with the family, whose 3 generations were here that night, from the grand-father to the 8-month grand-son! In the same street (Bo'Ai Lu 博爱路), we also found out very cool shops (hippy) and I laughed a lot with a rasta Xingjiang girl! Great relaxed atmosphere!
On Sunday, we rented 2 mountain bikes again to go for a ride around the ErHai Hu Lake (耳海湖). At the begin of the day, it was raining, but after a while the sun appeared and we could spent a great day! The landscape there looks like the Mediteranean sea and it was wonderful! In the evening, we went to a Tibetan Family bar & Guesthouse for dinner. A Tibetan guy and his Chinese wife (6-month pregnant) opened this place. We dicovered it the day before, and they proposed us to come back the next day for dinner (10 RMB/person).The woman comes from Guangzhou and her dishes are delicious. There were also their clients, a couple of Israelian people, who are travelling during 1 year all around Asia. We shared their dinner and it was a really nice moment. They are all very interressant people, especially the Tibetan guy, who did a trip from China to India via Tibet by foot.....amazing guy! It was a great evening!
Right now we are in Lijiang (丽江), where we arrived on Monday under the rain. But we didn't waste our time and we organised the rest of our trip, bought some fight tickets etc. Then we went to the Old City (古城) for a walk, but we found it too much touristic....Too much souvenir shops, too much crapy bars....Then we went up on the hill, and we found it a bit more authentic.
Yesterday we rented 2 mountain bikes and we had a ride to the Baisha Naxi village (白沙), which was a very important admistrative place in the region. The sun appeared in the middle of the day and it was a great ride! The landscape is wonderful!
As we arrived in the village, an old Naxi woman welcomed us and brought us to her house. She offered us tea and peanuts and I had to wear her traditional clothes! This grand-ma is very sweet and funny. Then we had some food in a local cafe of a very nice Naxi couple. The man was a calligraph and a poet, and he wrote a lot of stuffs about his village, his region and his culture. In the cafe, he installed his calligraphy workplace, and he sells also his work. It is very cool because he can write Chinese characters and also Dongba hieroglyphs (东巴文字). Apparently, he is the only one who learnt it in the village, so he is the only one who keeps his culture alive! We have a long talk together and they told me that from all the foreigners who are coming to their village (and there are a lot!), I am the 1st one they see who speaks so good Chinese and who can read it! (I had a 'mini-exam' from him) :) He told me that if I come back here one day, he will teach me calligraphy....so I have to come back!!!!!!! It was a great afternoon in this nice village! And finally we did a ride of approx. 20 km!!!!!!! So last night, we were exorsted, we just went to the old town to find a place for dinner before going to bed!
Today, the sun is shinning, so we will go out for a walk, maybe visit some cultural places or go swimming to a lake near our hotel.
Tomorrow we go to the Tiger Liping Gorge (虎跳峡) for a 2-day treck. So we are to be fit! June 21st~
We arrived last night in Zhongdian 中甸 (Shangrila 香格里拉) after having doing good the trek in the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Here it is not the same world anymore, Tibetan culture is very strong here, even we are still in China. Today the weather was a bit unstable, very cloudy but still with visible blue sky and sunshine. It is wonderful! Today we went to the hot spring to relax a bit and we had a walk in the old town. We took it easy because the 2nd day of the Tiger Leaping Gorge (yesterday) was very hard: we walk 25 km in 8 hours....yes unbelievable, I know...I never thought I could do that, but I can say that the last kilometers were extremely hard....But it was worthy, because the landscape was wonderful! Then at 6.00 pm we could catch the last bus to Zhondian (Shangrila) and we arrived here completely exorsted last night. We took a warm shower, had dinner and then go to a nice and deserved sleep!!!!
We plan to stay here until Wednesday, so I will write more about our adventures with the Tibetans very soon! ;)
June 23rd~
We spent a very quiet weekend, in order to recover from the Tiger leaping Gorge journey. Yesterday, we visited the lamassery here, which is the biggest one in whole China. It is a very beautiful architecture and there are beautiful draws on the walls in all the rooms. The pray hall was very impressive. This lamassery is still in activity and the monks are dressed in red. Then we went back to the old town, we visited another little temple on a hill with its golden pray column which is turning all the time. Then we just walked in the old town, had a drink in an artistic cafe with a lovely yard, did some shopping, etc. Just holidays! :) Then we had dinner at the Karma cafe, a very cool place: it is an old tibetan house, with a very cool local decoration, nice yard, nice old furniture. Our dinner was excellent and not expensive for the quantity and the quality we had, and then as it was a bit cold outside, we went into the house, and sat next to the little chemney...It was really comfy and the atmosphere of the place was great! The employees are really nice and they also have another building with rooms. So we decided that we will spend our last evening (tomorrow) in this place! For the moment, we are changing almost every day a guesthouse, because it is not so good.
Today, we had a ride by bike in the Tibetan countryside. We went through some villages but we didnt stop there because there is nothing unless locals'houses. The people are nice and said "hello" to us from far when they saw us! The landscape was very nice through, until it began to rain!! Then we went back to the old city, had a local cheese sandwich (cheese made from yak's milk!) for lunch and then we fell a little desoriented, we didnt know what to do because of the unstable weather....then we had another ride though the city and came back to the guesthouse. We are thinking about leaving Shangrila a day earlier now, because we saw everything around here already and the other nice places are far away...we wont have the time and the other problem is that we cant go further in the North direction, as some other places, like Deqin, are closed to the foreigners because of the Olympics.....If the weather is good tomorrow, then we will have another ride by bike to another direction because it is still very nice. If not, then we will go back to Lijiang by bus and try to catch a flight to Chengdu tomorrow night and then spend 2 days in Chengdu. We basically planed to spend one day only in Chengdu. So everything depends on the weather tomorrow.....I cross my fingers that everything will be good....I will be back on June 26th evening in Shanghai anyway!
June 26th~
We are in Chengdu since last night, we finally stayed in Shangrila 4 days as the weather was nice! :) We had a nice ride in the contryside in direction to the lake. We finally spend our last night in the Karma Cafe. In our opinion, it was the best place to stay in Zhongdian (Shangrila)! Here below the photos of the place:
We visited Chengdu a little today and i found "La Maison de Montpellier" here! I liked Chengdu, my general impression is that despite its size, it seems that life in this city can be relax! People here are not stressend like people in Shanghai, they seem to enjoy life. At night, they used to meet and go outside eat some BBQ until late!
We are going back to Shanghai tonight....
End of our wonderful trip in South China, I saw so many things and met so many different people, it was great! It would be a pity to leave China without doing it...
 I
 China...I will come back one day for sure!~~傅漪涟
Cap sur la province du Guizhou~一个星期在贵州June 5th~
We left Shanghai yesterday afternoon and I have to confess that it was not so easy at last to leave my friends and my lovely old Shanghai appartment.....
Yesterday evening we arrived in Guiyang (贵阳), capitale of the Guizhou province. Here I have the impression that the air is not polluted, I just breathe pure air!!!!! :) Yesterday we just stayed in the city and this morning we took a small bus to go to Anshun （安顺）, another smaller city. First we wanted to find an hotel to put our backpacks in the room, and we finally found a very cool and comfortable 3 star-hotel for 80 RMB (8 euros)/person!!!! Here below the pictures of the room:
And then we visited the dragon cave (龙宫洞) and it took the afternoon because we could also walk in the countryside, etc. Exactly what I needed! It was rainy the whole afternoon but it was ok because here everything is green and wet! We couls also see the fields in stairs. It was very beautiful! The people are very nice here, and they are surprised because I can speak Chinese!! But I think that in this province, it is very difficult to travel without speaking Chinese because everythink is written in characters and nothing is in English....not like in Shanghai! We didn't see a foreigner yet, and it makes me very happy! :)
I feel more relax and very delighted to do this trip at last!!! :)
Tomorrow we will go to the biggest waterfall in China (黄果树大瀑布) and then in the evening we go back to Guiyang to meet 2 Chinese friends of mine (Wendy and Lü Xie) there. And Saturday we will continue our trip and visit the Eastern part of this province with them!
I have to go now, tomorrow we have to get up early!! :)
June 8th~
Now it is being 3 and 1/2 days we are in the Guizhou province, and I can say that I love this place!!!!!
People are so nice and friendly! Even if their mandarin is not very standard, I share some nice moment with them and we can have nice talk together!
So Friday we continued our trip by visiting the greatest waterfall in China, the weather was wonderful and the waterfall very impressive!!!! We could even go behind the waterfall, it was very wet but very cool!!! :)
Then we got back to Guiyang and in the evening we meet Wendy and Lü Xie (from Shanghai). Now we are travelling all together until next Thursday. Yesterday, we were the whole day on the road in the bus (8 hours) to get to the small city Libo (荔波). The landscape on the road was so beautiful, but as the bus was too fast (I was scared all the time because we were sitting on the front of the bus) we could not take pictures.... The bus was a bit broken on the way, but the driver repaired it (I dont know how and I didnt want to know!! ahaha) and we finally arrived in the small city, which is located in the middle of montains and we found a nice familial hotel for....30 RMB (3 E) / person per night!!!!!! Beds are not so hard and we could have a nice rest. I even could use the wash machine of the landlord of the hotel to wash my stuffs!!! I fell immediatly at home! :)
The food is also very good here, because all the products come from the farms in the neighbourhood! So it is very fresh and very tasty!
Today we get up very early to go to the Xiao Qi Kong (小七孔), which is a place with a lot of mountains, bridges, fields, very transparent lakes and a very original forest which grows up in the water! It was wonderful and sooooo green!!! Air is so pure here too! On the way to go back to the town, a girl which belongs to a minority offers us some Zongzi 粽子(glutinous rice with chestnut packed in a leaf) because today it is DuanWuJie 端午节(Dragon boat festival) and Chinese people traditionally eat this during that day. The girl also wanted to invite us for dinner to her house too! :) but we had to go back to the town. Too bad!
Tomorrow we will leave this small town to go further to Rongjiang (榕江). In this area, we will visit some villages where different minorities are living. I think it will be great! I am very excited.
That's all for today. To be continued!!......
June 10th~
Right now I am in Rongjiang, which is a really small city, and there are a lot of small minority villages in the neighbourhood . The lanscape is still wonderful, and people here also very friendly.
Yesterday it was raining, but it was ok because we were on the road again ("Transfertag"!). We took a very local mini-bus and it was extremely uncomfortable....At the end, my backpack got wet because it was on the floor and the bus began to be on flood.....and I don't know for which reason!!!!!! 哎哟！Ayo.....but fortunatelly, we stopped in a city and we could hire a mini-van with a driver. So we finished our journey quicker and it was more comfortable! Then we arrived in Ronjiang at the end of the afternoon, we had some food (Hotpot) and then got back to the hotel and we had a very deep sleep!
Today we first visited a little temple of the Miao Minority and then we went to a traditional village of the Dong Minority. Then our driver propose to drive us to another Dong village, but in the montain, very far away, to hear the locals singing!! It took us one hour to get there, because after a while, the road was just soil, and the village appeared in the middle of nowhere...!!!!!!! It was a great afternoon, that we shared with the people of the village! They could speak a bit mandarin, so it was no problem to communicate! Actually they were working in the rice fields and when we arrived, they stopped and get prepared for the little live concert!!!!! their voices are amazing, even little children can sing! We took some great pictures!
Tomorrow, we will be on the road again, and we will go to another village called Xijiang (西江) in the neighbourhood of Kaili (凯里), which is a more touristic place. And from there, we plan to leave my Chinese friends and go back to Guiyang. From there we will have a flight to Kunming (昆明), the capital of the Yunnan province, and take the night train, to get to Dali （大理）(9 hours). And then we will spend 2 weeks in the Yunnan province. :)
To be continued.... |
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