Ageing Hippies

Old Dali is a walled village that once was the epicentre of the original hippie trail in China.

Our bus ( the journey was easy this time...great roads, modern coach, free water ) dropped us off at a small side street leading down to the village and we walked straight to our Hostel ( Jim's Tibetan Hostel) and it all looked pretty groovy and interesting.

We wandered up and down what we thought were the two main streets and encountered some Chinese tourists and a spattering of foriegners. The streets were filled with restaurants and tourist trinket shops and it looked like the epitome of an ageing hippie enclave.

It wasn't till we caught the bus the next day to renew our visas, that we realised we had only seen a small section of the walled Dali, it was a largish tourist town and we were both a little disappointed. In addition the modern city of Dali, some 15 or so kilometres away was encroaching on the old Dali, so it all seemed a little "Disneylandlike".

I know you are expecting a gruesome story about the dreaded "oral warning", and at first things went wrong. The office, a frightening, towering, communistic type edifce scared the bejesus out of us and the fact that, of course, it was closed for 3 hours when we arrived added to the tension (particularly as I hadn't checked the opening times!). But, sorry, it was all peachy pie. The female officer was extremely helpful, didn't comment on the fact that we were a day late and the whole process took twenty minutes. Strange that it took seven days in a major city like Kunming and 20 minutes in Dali.......China perhaps.

Having escaped the oral warning we spent 3 days in Dali and grew to like it more and more. Went to a fantastic market at Shapin, hung around the many restaurants playing cards....thats what ageing hippies do!!!....(Mandy is whipping my ass), and had an interesting night drinking rice wine with Jim, the owner of our hostel. and befriending his ageing mother.

She couldn't speak a word of English, but she and Mandy formed a bond one day when an attractive young English girl came into the hostel restaurant with next to nothing on...the Mother and Mandy locked eyes and "tut tutted at the same time, immediate bosom buddies so to speak......me, I couldn't fault the young ladies dress sense!!

I think it was whilst drinking rice firewater with Jim, that he talked us into paying him a lot of money to hire his van to get to our next destination.....thats not really fair I'm sure it was a well thought out decision! Thanks Jim

Here comes the sun

Two momentous events occurred in Kunming

Firstly..... we actually saw the sun.

We had seen a hazy version of the planet (or is it a star?....I can hear the disbelief at my ignorance from a few select of you) at times, but for the first time in China we saw it in a clear sky. There was a continual haze over Beijing, but because the quality of air seemed Ok I don't think we once commented on the pollution issue.....maybe we were having too much fun! Likewise in Shanghai. It had been overcast elsewhere. So it did come as a shock to realise that we had been in China for 3 weeks without a clear sunny sky.

Secondly....... we had our first glass of chilled white wine....

I'll let you decide which was the most momentous....but we were pretty excited to visit a groovy little Italian restaurant, run by two gorgeous Italian girls, and sit outside on the footpath (much to the amusement of the locals) and sip cold, drinkable, affordable Pinot Grigio.

Kunming is a university town and has a wonderful bar and restaurant area which we frequented often in our three days there. It also has a beautiful park which we drove around in taxis getting to the bars, but no matter how hard we tried we just couldn't locate it on foot, every direction we were given, led us apparently near the park but never to it. One of those frustrating moments of travel!

Our walking in circles was rewarded, though, when Mandy stumbled onto an artists shop and , after much deliberation, purchased some beautiful wolf hair brushes.

The other reason we stayed in Kunming was to renew our 30 day visas. We found the visa office, filled in the forms and were about to hand them over when the "visa girl" said that, "it woulf take 7 days for the process”. We had no intention of spending another 7 days in Kunming so we asked the girl about options. She told us it may be quicker in Dali, our next destination. However our visas would be expired by one day by the time we got there. Would this be a problem..we enquired. The girl thought about it and suggested we might get on oral warning!!

Now, Mandy likes to do the right thing, so she was particularly concerned about an oral warning. I didn't think it would be too bad, as long as it wasn't an oral warning conducted in a basement room with a dripping tap!

We left Kunming en route to Dali in a VIP bus (enough of the local buses), a little nervous re oral warnings.

Bloggus Interruptus

Technology is a wonderful thing but it does have its limitations in some destinations, which postpones communications. Wi Fi is still in its global infancy.

In addition technology often does not cope with the foibles of human behaviour.

Take, for example, technology's reaction to the removal of an exterior harddrive ( which is holding all photos and information) before the computer allows you to remove it, before the computer states " safe to remove hardware"

Bad things happen!

Technology does not allow for technoklutzes (such as myself) mistakenly identifying the harddrive cord for the power cord.

Bad things happen!

Files get distorted, photos don't want to upload, warnings such as "invalid images" fill the screen, where coloured memories should be, horrible, black crosses appear................relationships become strained.

Blogs are interrupted.

Eventually, prayers (me) and intelligent technomanipulation (Mandy) seem to fix the problems.

Companionship and travels, once again, find an even keel.

Blogs continue.

Strange Bedfellows

As soon as we entered the cabin of our train from Guyiang to Kunming that evening, you could see the dismay on the faces of the youngish Chinese couple who would be sharing it with us.....I also was disappointed as on the last journey we had the cabin to ourselves. Mandy has yet to describe our first journey and I wont spoil things by stating that these train cabins sleep 4, two lower beds and two upper beds. We had booked the lower beds, so this couple had esconced themselves on our seats next to the window, which was fine by us. We knew they would move up to their bunks when it was bed time!!

I said dismay to describe the Chinese couples reaction to see us but maybe it was closer to horror. They kindly helped us stow our bags though, but then went out to the corridor and started having an animated conversation, you know the type married couples have when plans one of them has made are falling apart. They were obviously speaking in Chinese but I think I got the drift.

Her... " You promised me the train would be empty and that we would have a compartment by ourselves and now look what has happened....we have to share it with foriengers!!!"

Him... " It will be fine dear"

Her... " I knew this would happen, I told you we should have flown, but no, you said it would be more romantic on the train....I told you to book the whole compartment, but no , you said it is low season, no-one will be on the train and now look...."

Him... "It will be fine dear"

Her... " And look at them, they look as if they haven't had a proper wash for weeks...and what if they offer me some strange food of theirs, what do I do then....and we will have to sit in the top bunks straight away, I told you to book the lower bunks, but no, you knew better"

Him... " It will........

You know the conversation.

Eventually I made eye contact with them and motioned for them to come back in and sit down on our seats and that seemed to settle them down.

I went and got us a beer each and on return found Mandy holding a blackened object and wearing a cautious expression...the Chinese lady had obviously got in first and offered Mandy some of their wierd food. It turned out to be a roasted yam and was delicious and that broke the ice completely and we were all smiles for awhile.

Until..... I went and got the second beers and we both noticed a look of concern on their faces. They were obviously thinking that things could very well get out of hand here.


Little did they know there was a bottle of red wine screaming to be opened, in a day pack under their seat!!!!

The beckoning of the wine was too much so I went and sat on the dickey seat in the corridor, out of sight of our travelling companions, taking the day pack with me. Opened the red and poured the wine into two green mugs that we had purchased for just such an occasion, handed one into the compartment for Mandy, and we enjoyed the bottle without causing more distress to our Chinese couple.

They went "upstairs" to their bunk early and with little to do we followed suit.

It is a little strange locked in a compartment with complete strangers, lying under a douna fully clothed, trying to get to sleep.

Of course Mandy got the giggles and I just wanted to say "Goodnight Ma , goodnight Pa, goodnight Johnboy"!!!! ( you must remember the Waltons )

Mandy was fiddling with a control knob before we went to sleep thinking it was the heater control. At 5am the next morning we were rudely awakened by a blast of Chinese music.....the knob had been the volume control!!!!!