Here's some more information on our time in Lijiang. It's written after-the-fact since it was very hard to get computer access there. This is Jennifer writing from Yangshuo.
We arrived in the Lijiang airport on Monday. We pre-booked a hostel room at Mama Naxi, which we found in the Lonely Planet guidebook and a traveler in Xian said it was a cool place to stay. He said, however, that it would be nearly impossible to find on our own. This is because the old town in Lijiang is a maze of winding cobblestone streets. So, we emailed Mama and she said someone would pick us up. Unfortunately, when we got there we didn't have a ride, so we hopped on the local bus to downtown instead. We then got out and hailed a cab, pointing to the chinese characters in the book under the Mama Naxi entry. It would have been nice for him to gesture in some way to show if he understood what we wanted, but he just kind of looked at us. Eventually we got in and he took us to the old town. He even drove down some of the cobblestone streets that he probably shouldn't have (he got stared down at one point by a pedestrian). When he let us out we still had to walk a ways, and ask for directions. But we finally found it.
We got the feeling Mama Naxi was not too organized because they couldn't figure out our reservation, but we got our own room so it was fine. A little strange to find huge legs of meat hanging from the ceiling outside the room, but we got used to it....the other not-so-nice part was the bathrooms. We only had a common bathroom with no toilet. Just a squat hole like you have to use at all public restrooms. Again, we got used to it...we also got used to the myriad of cats and dogs wandering the premises. Turn any corner and you're likely to find some animal curled up sleeping. I had to be sure to avoid the one dog that barked at me when I left the room at night to use the bathroom!
The awesome part about Mama Naxi was the atmosphere. Every night Mama (who refers to herself in the 3rd person as Mama) calls the guests for dinner and seats you with other travelers and serves your table about 8 main courses. It's a great spread and only costs 15Y, or the equivalent of a little over $2. The first night we ate with an Israeli couple who were traveling for 7 months after finishing their time in the army. The second night we sat with 6 other people from the US, UK, and Australia, all who had been teaching English in China and had some time off to travel.
Mama also liked to send you off for the day with little bags of yogurt and bananas. People don't really refrigerate yogurt here, and they drink it with a straw. It tastes good!
We didn't really trust Mama and her staff to make our next travel arrangements like we have at other hostels, because they seemed a little scatter-brained when it came to detailed information. Mama was also a little hard to understand. We've found that sometimes people are speaking in English to us but it still sounds like Chinese! So, we booked our flight out of Lijiang online using a website someone told us about for cheap local flights.
In Lijiang we visited a pagoda with a beautiful view of the city's rooftops, we walked around a really well gardened and beautiful park with a lake, pagodas, temples, and traditional Naxi music. One night we heard the Naxi orchestra, which was really great. It had flutes, chimes, guitars, gongs, the chinese cello (don't know what it's actually called), and singing. The conclusion of the concert was strange, however. The conductor put up a screen and showed a video of his chinese choir singing Handel's Messiah. Strange way to conclude a concert of ancient and traditional Naxi music...
Our second day in Lijiang we ventured by public bus to a small town called Baisha to see the frescoes in the temple there. That actually wasn't that impressive but we had fun getting there. An English student helped us find the corner to wait on for the bus. She had to ask 2 people for directions in order to help us. She was very eager to help. Then about 10 minutes later she came back because she realized she gave us the wrong information, and helped us again. People here are in general very friendly and eager to help.
That may be about it regarding Lijiang. We were stopped many times on this one scenic bridge for our picture, so we decided not to loiter there. We also got adventurous and sampled the yak meat (tasted like bacon) and yak butter tea (like drinking foamy butter).
Most people used Lijiang as a starting point for the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek. It's a two day/one night trek to see one of the highest gorges in China. Too bad we didn't have an opportunity, but hey it's a reason to return to China!
