Home » China » Yunnan Province; China

MURRAY'S DIARY for the complete story.

Yunnan Province; China

Mar
2004-09-14 15:37:29

Displayed times (last time: ) Rating 4/5

Rating: 4.00 out of 5.00. 1 members have rated this article

Kunming to Dali - Lijiang

Cycling away from a city always means cycling about 20km through heavy industry., This time it is worse. The alternative road follows the highway, and apparently there is something going on on the highway and we get all the traffic against on our road. The first 70km we can´t breath anything else but exhaust gases and we are pushed from the road by trucks and touring busses that all want to be the first in Kunming. The other 50km are very scenic going through mountainous valleys. We stay overnight at truck stops, most of the time recognised by 6 numbered doors in a row in a small flat building or the ´cable car´ Chinese character. Every 10km you can chose one or two of these. Inside it looks like a garage with a small window and two beds, but it costs only 10 yuan ($1,20) per person and you can eat with the family (another 5 yuan). We cycle in five days to

Chinese tourism
Nineteen touringcar buses have just unloaded their Chinese tourist. We distinguish 5 groups, one group with yellow baseball caps, one with red caps and one with with-blue caps (etc, etc). The other 250 people have come with cheaper tour operators that do not provide caps. In groups of 50 they are welcomed by a girl that belongs to the ‘local’ Chinese minority, the Bai, or at least she is dressed up to look like one. Each ‘Bai’-guide carries a triangle flag (either red, yellow or blue) so that her group can follow her easy. With a speaker she screams things we don’t understand. It’s a short climb up to the cable car entrance, proudly presented as Austrian since all parts are imported from Austria. From the top of the cable car we make a 4 hours walk to a smaller cable car down back to Dali. When we reached the cable car station we see a queue in front of the cable car (we already noticed the ‘few’ buses down on the parking lot), which lasts for an hour. We are the only two who are not domestic ...