Hello again, long time no post!
Well you will be glad to know that the wait is now over and I will begin to blog about my National week trip. I will post in instalments because seriously way to many things happened for me to just type in one entry.
Lets begin,
The week every one was waiting for had finally arrived. National week had begun the minute Meghan Janet and I had boarded the plane from Shanghai to Kunming. I knew our trip was official when we arrived at the airport and decided to sleep right there on the lobby floor, true backpackers style. It was around 6 am when our cold aching bodies decided that the Kunming airport floor had not been the best place to rest our weary heads, so we hailed a cab and booked it to the bus station. There we hoped on a 9 hour bus from Kunming to Lijang. The first 9 hour bus ride didn’t seem that bad; if you take away the constant hoarking, the loud obnoxious Asian movies and the chain smokers which filled the bus like college kid hot boxing their parent’s car, the ride was actually quite relaxing. The views were really what kept me going. Outside the window of our bus we saw lush rice fields with people tending the land. We saw snow capped mountains and valleys. As we winded the mountain corners wed pass by waterfalls gushing down the sides of the mountains, and almost every bus ride had either a sunset or sunrise to watch. So naturally i barely even noticed all the little annoyances on the bus ...but little did I know that I was to face new issue and more looming issue in the bus rides to come, but I’ll get into that later. We finally arrived in Lijang around 7 o’clock that same evening and made our way to Mamma Naxi’s guest house. Mama Naxi, Oh Mama Naxi well let me just say that you don’t mess with mama. She was the sweetest and craziest person I have ever met, and I loved every bit of my stay at her guest house. She really took care of her guests, brought us tea, served us breakfast and constantly insisted on us taking a banana every time we left the hostel. Oh yeah and we also had an 11 o’clock curfew! Yup all the comforts of home including the scolding we got when we happened to “forget” that there was a curfew.
Any way we ended up staying in Lijang for 2 nights instead of 1 because the city and its old town was absolutely gorgeous!
The first night we decided to check out the Old Tow, a very beautiful and extremely touristy spot. The place was buzzing like Alfies on a Wednesday night in Kingston, there were people everywhere! We walked about the old cobble stoned streets, through the magnificent alley ways lined with the canal that flowed through the city making the town resemble a miniature Venice. We walked down the lantern lit streets sampling the local street vendors to get a taste of what Lijang had to offer, and let me just say they offered some pretty tasty treats. You could get anything from fried chickpea carrot and hot pepper patties, dumplings, and spinach pancakes to scorpion, bees and hot dogs.... yes I just said hot dogs. It was a great first night and I went to bed feeling very full and ready for a good night’s rest, in an actual bed. The next day we woke up early to get a head start on the day. Our plan was to see as much of the city as possible and that is exactly what he did. We walked through the black dragon pool park and decided to climb up to the top of elephant hill. The hill was a nice morning hike up about a million sets of stairs. Now I pride myself on being fairly athletic and in any other setting I’m sure I could have tackled those stairs as easily as the four year old we watched pass us. However at an altitude level of almost 2500 meters the climb had a very taxing effect on all three of us. It was actually quite comical when we were keeled over panting on the side of the mountain while local 80 year old men and their grandchildren walked passed us almost effortlessly. When we finally reached the top the view was spectacular! It was totally worth every second of that climb because you could literally see the entire city and then some. It was interesting to note the merger of the old and new towns and see how development had changed the look of the city. On our way down we ran into a small group of American guys just beginning their hike. We stopped to chat for a good 15 min and decided it would be a good idea to exchange numbers and meet up for drinks later that night. As we left one of them asked me how far until the top, and I may or may not have lied and told them they were almost at the top when in fact they had only just begun... opppsie! To be continued ....
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