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