Tengchong: He Shun Village

He Shun village is really beautiful, surrounded by green hills and rice paddies. I walked around the town and took some pictures, then went up into the hills (fields, tombs, forests) for a view of the sunset. Notice the pagoda on the top of the mountain in the picture with the clouds and pine trees.

 

 

Tengchong: The Road to Burma

Yesterday I said goodbye to Mark, and to Dali, and headed off on my adventure westward toward Burma.

 

I couldn't buy a ticket to Tengchong in Dali Old Town, since the buses left from Xiaguan (Dali New Town, about 15 km away). So I took a public bus most of the way to the bus station in Xiaguan, then walked the rest. I got there at about 9:15 AM, in time to buy my ticket for the 10 AM express bus.

 

I was impressed by the public bus system in Xiaguan and Dali - the buses were big and spacious, and seemed to also be frequent and efficient (and easy to navigate).

 

I was assigned an aisle seat for the busride, which was annoying because I wanted a window. Luckily a man in a window seat in front of me switched to a different seat in the back of the bus, so I took his window seat, next to an older man.

 

Nobody on the bus spoke English. It took a while to actually leave Xiaguan, but once we did, the road was fast. The expressway has been extended west from Xiaguan - I'm not sure how far it goes now, but the aim is to connect it all the way to Ruili and the Burmese border. This new highway means travel times are a lot shorter - we drove on the highway for two hours, through several tunnels and across the extremely brown and fast moving Mekong River, and then stopped for bathrooms and lunch just outside Baoshan.

 

The man who was sitting next to me on the bus paid for my bathroom ticket, which was very nice of him. I think he thought I wouldn't know how to pay on my own. Later I shared my rice crackers with him. After bathroom, it was lunchtime, and everyone from my bus went into a restaurant where most people got a meal on a silver tray - much like a thali meal in India. Everyone got a small serving of several dishes: green beans and potato salad, eggplant with chili, cold salad of ma-la fatty pork, pork with pickled veggies, french fries, peanuts and rice. On the side everyone also got a bowl of vegetable and garlic soup. This cost me 10 RMB, which is about $1.25. While nothing was outstanding, I definitely prefer Chinese rest area lunches to American rest area lunches.

 

After lunch, we continued through the valley surrounding Baoshan, then went up into the hills again before making an impressive descent into the valley of the Salween River. The Salween River, according to Wikipedia, is the longest un-dammed (or however that's spelled) river in Asia...it starts in Tibet, then flows through Yunnan province before going into Burma and Thailand and emptying into the sea near the Burmese/Thai border. Many major Asian rivers go through Yunnan province - north of Dali, near Lijiang, the Yangzi River goes through Tiger Leaping Gorge before flowing north an east through Sichuan and out toward Shanghai....the Mekong flows south from Yunnan to Laos and Vietnam, and the Shweli River (which I would cross later just before arriving in Tengchong) is a tributary of the Irawaddy, which is the principal river of Burma.

 

At the Salween River, we left the highway to head west toward Tengchong on a smaller road. Down by the river, the landscape started to look a lot more tropical. I saw fields of sugarcane and coffee, as well as banana and mango trees. The bus got hot too, since it seemed like the air conditioning only worked when we were going downhill, which was only about 50% of the time.

 

We drove through a lot of forest - the least populated part of China I have seen so far - and then made our way down to the Shweli River valley, then it was about 45 minutes more driving on curvy roads before we arrived in Tengchong. As promised, the busride only took 6 hours (including the lunch stop), so it wasn't too bad at all - I was able to listen to my ipod which helped block out the movies blasting on the TVs in the bus, and the seats had decent leg room so I wasn't as squished as I was on the busride from Kunming to Dali.

 

When I arrived in Tengchong, I took a taxi straight from the bus station to He Shun, a small village about 6 km outside town. That's where I spent last night and I'll be staying there again tonight - it's very pretty and peaceful and there are a ton of nice houses and gardens, since many of the former residents are rich and have sent a lot of money back to the village. Tourists also come to visit the village on day trips, and there is a 30 RMB entrance fee, which I avoided since my taxi went straight through the gate without stopping. I will hopefully return to the village late enough tonight that the ticket collectors won't be working anymore, so I'll avoid the fee again.

 

 

Tengchong: All Around Erhai Lake

Here are pictures from various places around Dali and Erhai Lake.

 

A) View of central Dali from the West Gate tower.

 

B) View of Dali from the temple near Higherland Inn.

 

C) View of temple from the chairlift

 

D) Shuanglang Overlook

 

E) Shuanglang at the edge of the lake

Tongcheng: Dali Food Pictures

Here are some food pictures from Dali. Again, not sure what order they will show up in when the blog publishes, so you can play a matching game:

 

A) Cold Rice Noodles with Chicken in Dali.

 

B) Choosing Vegetables for the hot pot-like dish in Dali.

 

C) Individual servings of vegetables cooking in a communal hot pot in Dali.

 

D) Woman making traditional bread in Xizhou.

 

E) David and Mark getting ready to eat bread in the plaza in Xizhou.

Tengchong: Kunming Food Pictures

Just two pictures for this post.

 

Photo A) The big hawker center in Kunming was impressive, and I might have to go back there for lunch next week when I'm there again. Miao Miao told us that the city doesn't allow street food stalls anymore, so they have all moved to this big indoor food court. It was a lot of fun checking out all the local foods.

 

Photo B) Crossing the Bridge Noodles. I described this in the previous post from Kunming, so here is a picture.

Tengchong: Goodbye Yangshuo

During my last few days in Yangshuo, I went out to two big dinners with Leo, Kelly and Kelly's family - by this point, basically my Chinese host family. Here's a picture of one of the big meals, at a new restaurant in the center of town. The highlight was garlic bean thread noodles with cabbage (on the left part of the lazy susan). We also had roast duck, spicy beer frog with pickled vegetables, water spinach with salty tofu, pickled vegetables with chili, basket of fried shrimp, intestines and tea leaves, old duck soup with ginko nuts and longanberry, pork belly with taro served in bamboo, and sizzling squid.

 

I'm also including a picture of Leo and Kelly with Pippy (the dog) and Stella (Kelly's niece)

 

Tengchong: Old Stone Bridge

I'm in Tengchong now, far away from where this picture was taken. But I took this photo last week, very close to the cooking school in Yangshuo. I took a walk around the countryside and found this nice bridge.

DaLi: Erhai Lake

I'm still in DaLi, but leaving tomorrow for Tongcheng, and then on to Mangshi after that....then flying back to Kunming from Mangshi on Tuesday, then to Shanghai on Wednesday.....then there for 3 nights before going back to London, and then New York!

 

So now everyone knows my schedule. Good.

 

Just after my last blog post, Mark and I went to a great noodle place where we had spicy cold noodles with chicken - we both got small bowls for 3 RMB, but I wished I had had a bigger bowl, since they were really delicious. After that I was still a bit hungry, so we went to a place across the street where they cooked vegetables in a sort of hot pot and then the cooked vegetables were served in a soup. It had sichuan peppercorns but wasn't too spicy - but it made the tongue feel tingly with the 'ma la' sensation.

 

After lunch, Mark and I walked with our bags in the blazing sun up to the chairlif - about a 20 minute walk, which was a bit uphill and very hot. We took a chairlift up the mountain, where we were immediately summoned in to the Budhist temple, where we lit incense, said a prayer, wrote a wish in a book and then paid money to help our wish be granted. Mark paid 100 RMB for his wish, which meant he received a little charm on a necklace. I was cheap and only paid 10 RMB for my wish, so I got nothing, and probably my wish won't come true.

 

We stayed at a place called Higherland Inn - the views of the valley and lake down below were really nice, but it was kind of chilly out, especially at night. We took a small hike to a nearby waterfall in the afternoon, then just relaxed in the evening. This morning, after breakfast, we came back down the mountain and checked into the Jade Emu hotel, where the German girls had stayed two nights earlier. It's a really nice place and the staff are friendly, and they helped us organize a taxi to take us up to three different villages along Erhai Lake.

 

We had a good trip, took a bunch of pictures, and tried some good food. The villages had little touristy pockets, but for the most part people were going about their everyday lives and we had a good glimpse into traditional life around here. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures at some point.

 

But now it's off to enjoy the last night in DaLi before my potentially endless busride tomorrow.

 

 

DaLi: Jumping Off the Plate

Last night I asked my hotel where I should go to try good local food, and they suggested an area with lots of Bai restaurants a few blocks from our hotel.

 

I walked down there with Mark - many restaurants display all their ingredients (mostly veggies, but also fish, mushrooms, etc) outside the restaurant, so it's easy to point and choose. We ran into two German women who were also looking for food, though they were more wary of the "authentic" stuff...but they came along with us to the place we chose.

 

There was already a big table of Chinese people at the restaurant, and when I went over to investigate what they ordered, I tasted a cold pork dish and a chicken dish from their table. I ended up ordering the the pork dish, not really knowing what it was - then we went to the front of the restaurant and pointed to other items. I chose some mushrooms - there are several types here....and also some purple veggies (like purple spinach), and some garlic stalks.

 

The four of us shared these four dishes. The mushrooms were stir fried together with chilies, and they were really excellent. I'm not even sure what kind of mushrooms they all were. The garlic stalks were cooked with sliced pork filet, and the purple "greens" were sauteed with garlic and a bit of chili. The cold pork dish was pretty good, but I was the only one who ate the "pork" part - I asked someone at the restaurant to write down the dish for me, since it wasn't on the menu. Later at the hotel I got it translated - it was pig ears! But I thought it was pretty good, and nice and spicy. With one beer, rice and tea, the meal was plenty for the four of us, and cost about 10 US dollars.

 

Just before leaving, a Chinese couple sitting next to us ordered a cold dish that arrived at their table - it was a salad of tiny prawns. I glanced over as we were getting up to leave, and saw that the prawns were still alive, and jumping out of the salad! The waitress brought them a plate to cover up the dish to prevent the food from splashing and bouncing onto the table. This freaked out the Germans, who ran out of the restaurant, but I looked at the dish curiously, so they offered me a bite. I took a prawn that wasn't moving, and bit off the tail. It mostly tasted like the chili sauce it was served in....but I think it's the first time I've ever eaten still-moving seafood (or in this case river/lakefood)

 

DaLi is nice - we stayed in town last night, at a nice new hostel. It's pretty touristy, a lot like Yangshuo, but pleasant nonetheless. Later we're heading up to the mountains to stay up there instead of in the town...then I'll probably be parting ways with Mark and heading west toward Burma!

 

More soon

 

Kunming: Bridge Over Troubled Noodles

 

 

I arrived in Kunming yesterday, and I've been eating since my arrival. I traveled here with a guy named Mark who I met in Yangshuo, and the two of us met up with a woman named Miao last night - she lives in Kunming and will also be studying in London with me next year (doing Anthropology of Development).

 

We walked to a big hawker center for dinner, where we ate a lot. First we had a dish where we chose a bunch of veggies, tofu and other goodies, then had it boiled in a big communal hot pot, then ate it w/ chili sauce. The broth was already spicy and had lots of sichuan peppercorn. Next we had some rice noodles in a spicy bean sauce, and some banana roti. Then a huge pot of soup with sour bamboo shoots and fish. Then finally some tea flavored jello, and some pineapple/coconut/sago drink.

 

Awesome.

 

This morning Mark and I had Cross Bridge Noodles for breakfast - I got a big bowl of broth, and then some noodles, raw meat, a quail egg, and raw veggies. You dump them all in the broth and wait for it to cook, then eat it. Very good - this is Yunnan's most famous dish. After breakfast we got a bit more to eat - a rice pancake w/ peanut and spicy bean paste, and a steamed bun with red bean.

 

Kunming seems like a delightful city - I could definitely spend more time here, but it's off to DaLi this morning. So hopefully I'll report on more soon!