life's adventures This is the story of my wanderings through Asia

I met loads of nice people, in particular spent a bit of time and became very close to a lovely Italian girl, Tecla. She is off to study in Qingdao, one of the places I really wouldn’t mind working next year. We spent a whole day walking the city, completely lost but it was pretty fun. When Tecla left I felt a bit of a lump saying goodbye, but hopefully our paths will cross again one day.

I also befriended a German girl who is studying here in Kunming.  She was stressing about finding an apartment but we managed to have some fun drinking and hanging out. Its good not needing to drink much as it would break my budget badly! We did splurge on some delicious food, I had a plate of falafel at a nice restaurant called Salvadors, very western cool style bar/restaurant.

I packed up and left on the day my passport was ready for pickup. Took a bus to Dali, about 5 and half hours. Beside the road were beautiful, small villages along mountainous valleys, layered fields of crops in a very Chinese style. Small pointed straw hats bobbing amongst the rows of produce ripe for picking.

The sky was pretty clear apart from some white clouds, and I could feel the air getting cleaner.

On arrival I was surprised at the size of the city, as my imagination of Dali was a lot smaller. I took a taxi to the old part of town, which was about 15 minutes drive. There I found my ideal Chinese town. The buildings were all roofed old style and the lanes cobbled and neat. I found the hostel (Dali Hump) really easily and went in to book a room.

Rachel had stayed here not long ago and told me about some of the people running the place that she had befriended, as it was relatively new. So straight away I had some contacts and the managers were all very friendly and welcoming to me.

I went for a walk on that first evening after being told there’s loads of good places to eat and its very hard to get lost. I got lost wandering too far in every direction. It was unnerving so I found my way back to the hostel after turning around a few times. Luckily they fed me up on some drinks and barbequed skewers of spicy meat.

The next day I did some more exploring, we then went to the lake for a swim. Riding the bike was fun but in no time the pain took over.  The lake was lovely and refreshing, and clean! And riding through the village to get to a good spot was cool. I was with the general manager of the Hump, Matti, a Canadian/Finnish guy, two very cool, friendly Chinese girls, and a chick from the Netherlands.

At the Hump on Wednesdays and Saturdays is a big all you can eat BBQ, So I decided to stay put, relax and enjoy two evenings of gorging myself on delicious food. The couple who run the Hump are Brian and Jo, Irish and English, a beautiful young couple who have great ideas and creative minds. They were very chill and friendly, between organizing and stressing about the business, they were drinking and smoking and laughing. At the BBQ there is a local who plays a Chinese harp, absolutely mind blowing beautiful sound. Also a funny bloke Ed, who plays his guitar wonderfully, world music he calls it. Jo sang a song as did an interesting French lady, Fanny, and Jo also demonstrated skills with her fire poi.

Each day at the Hump in Dali was lazy but fun. I went up the mountain on Saturday and as the cable car wasn’t working I climbed the slippery clay track two hours to the temple at the top, then continued to a waterfall. By the time I got back to the hump I had been gone for 7 hours, and the BBQ was nearly ready. I wolfed down 4 plates of meat and wraps and veggies, before getting in on the drink specials.

On Sunday, not feeling so hot, I left Dali with high hopes to make it back to trip to the LiJiang Snow Mountain Music Festival early October, which gives us 3 weeks in Hanoi.