We caught an 8 hour train to Dali the very next day and looked forward to settling somewhere for a little while. Derrick, from the Irish bar in Kampot, advised us on a guesthouse a little outside Dali. We arrived to find an Australian barman and a very lovely clean guesthouse.
We got given the best room - the one with an awesome view of the mountain range. We settled in with a beer or two and some chinese food. We had a quiet and early night.
The next day we set off into town to see some of the sights. Dali old town has city walls and has gates to the north, east, south and west. That and the cobblestoned roads makes it a very pretty and interesting place.
After much discussion and getting ourselves lost several times we caught a mini bus to the chairlift up the mountain we could see from our bedroom window. It was a long way up and had the most stunning views. We did a 5 km round walking trip across valleys and a river. The tops of part of this mountain range had visible snow which was exciting for us. We took many photos of the view that just kept getting better and better the more we walked.
Over the next few days we headed into the city most days and just wondered and checked out other sights. We also got well acquainted with others at our guesthouse and the bar.
About a 5 minute walk from our guesthouse there was part of the massive lake that sits over the other side of town and we found ourselves spending alot of afternoons walking down to the jetty.
Dali was one of our highlights, such a nice, scenic and friendly town. It seems that people often get sort of 'stuck' there because of its atmosphere. If we didn't have a time limit I could see us doing the same thing. The travellers there were also of a similar mind set and personalities as us.
One funny thing about Dali is, there are these older women who dress up in the traditional Bai (local village) clothes and then approach the tourists (us included) and ask 'you want to buy the gungas'. These innocent looking ladies, who look so cute, are peddling drugs!
