16th November 2007: - Today we have decided to hire bikes & make a journey to Baisa about 7 km out of town. Our journey is easy enough with no hills, thank goodness & majority of the time we are quiet roads. One of the reasons we are visiting the village is to see if we can meet Doctor Ho, who was made famous by travel writer Bruce Chatwin, who wrote such a lovely piece on the Doctor that he is now in nearly every travel book for the Lijiang region. If you watched Michael Palins Himalayan Adventures, Dr Ho diagnoses him with bad Chi. Anyway as we cycle through the small village Dr Ho steps out of his clinic & invites us in with a warm welcome & a lovely cup of tea handed to us by his wife. Dr Ho is 81 & his secret is to stay happy. We have an interesting chat with Dr Ho & we come away with some herbal tea, for this we make a donation to the clinic, as this is all Dr Ho asks for & leave with him telling us to stay happy. We then get on our bikes & peddle onto the sun drenched mountain roads.
17th November 2007: - Our last day in Lijiang & I for one have had a fantastic time here. So we got up early & went for a walk in the old town to take a few more pictures when no-one is about. Just our luck the day that we leave the sun comes out again to give us a fab shot of the mountains. Our last Naxi breakfast @ the Prague Café was great & we left Lijiang on a full stomach. Bus journey to Dali was pretty uneventful apart from me forgetting where we are staying. Luckily a very helpful Chinese couple helped us out & we eventually found the Mingtong hotel.
18th November 2007: - Today we decided to leave our lovely clean Mingtong hotel which is situated by the extremely big river Ehrea & head to Dali old town to have some breakfast. Old Dali town is like Lijiang with its streams running in & out of the streets but with less character & pushy sales people. Saying this we did have a very nice stroll around the tiny museum of Dali. Theres not that much to see but the peace & quiet was lovely. Orchids growing in pots, would most probably take so much effort to grow back home. We head back to the hotel & discuss with the manager our bus options to Jinghong. Before we knew it he is on his Moped to purchase them for us.
19th November 2007: - We wake early to catch the No 2 bus into old Dali to have breakfast & to change up some money for the border crossing into Laos. This done we then take a taxi to the long distance bus station, which was an experience, we got dropped off @ the wrong place, luckily for us yet again there was a lovely Chinese lady who helped us out & told another taxi to take us to the correct place. Well we eventually got to the long distance bus station & saw our lovely sleeper bus that will be our home for the next 17hrs. What can I say so far this bus journey has been an adventure with people hopping on & off as we go along. We both have the first two top bunks so we have a fantastic view of the roads, or lack of! So far I have had about an hours sleep; I can tell this is going to be another long night!
20th November 2007: - We arrived in Jinghong @ about 7.00 to find that we are actually @ the correct bus station to go onwards to Mengla. We eventually get on the 9.20 bus to Mengla & oh my god, we are crammed in like sardines & we end up with the back seat, sharing with two Chinese men, one of whom has to be the tallest Chinese man I have seen on our travels through China. Our bus journey takes 5 hrs & we arrive in Mengla in the hot afternoon sun. We are unable to find the hotel that Lonely planet recommends so head to another one within 300m of the south bus station. Thank-you to another couple of backpackers for this, they had just come across from Laos & told us where to go, we also told them the onward journey to Jinghong, hope they got on ok? Our hotel is fab for just 100 Yuan & the shower is wonderful, just what we needed after so many hours on a bus.
