Dali and ErHai lake

Dali, I somehow did not find to be the all-relaxing place it was supposed to be. Another place to go and drink at night, do nothing by day - and yes, the streets of the old city look like street of an old city ...

So it's obvious why it would be considered as a nice hangout, but really - a bit too noisy. Maybe the hotel I moved to for tonight will be a bit more quiet.

 

I'm now getting to the confused part about Chinese people (as expected). The rudeness is very obvious - as if there is a gene of consideration lacking - things like smoking inside a close sleeper-bus (thank god it was only two people and not the whole lot), talking or watching a movie on the laptop in a dorm room when other people are obviously trying to sleep - are just small obvious examples.

 

I guess this easily traces back to ultra-rational behavior I was mentioning when talking about Kunming (Game Theory and such) - maybe it is the rest of us that have a defunctional gene.

However, consideration can change when you're an insider. When I specifically mentioned to Luojun that I'm dead tiered after having spent the previous night with 3 women - in the context of him asking me about eating at some point - he suddenly got conscious of the noise, went to close the movie running on his computer, and went out of the room to do his talking.

The previous evening we went for a dinner and coffee together, which brought us close. That night (after getting some sleep), I also joined him and 3 other Chinese guys at a bar. A rare occasion indeed, for them to go to a bar - specially Luojun, but of course when I found them in the bar - I realized they somehow managed to find a bar in which we were the only party. Before long we were doing some fine male bonage blasting the place with some Karaoke.

 

They were planning to rent bicycles and head for a village on the other side of the lake the folliowing morning, but I figured I'd need some rest, so declined their offer to join. However, the following morning, when I woke up about 9 or 10, they were still around, going back and forth talking about going, so at some point I just said "Can I still join?", and there you go. I later told them that I haven't been actually on a bicycle for a couple of years, so will have to go slowly - and they said, sure - no problem. Then one of them realized what I was saying (but it was too late to back up on the offer) "What if you get too tiered?"  "You can leave me on the road to die quietly".

 

Actually, the last time I was on anything remotely resembling bycicle was probably over 3 years ago in some Tel-Aviv Gym ...

 

Indeed, as soon as you leave Dali - it's great - and we had real luck with the weather: a cool overcast but no actual rain. The view of the mountains around is great, with little rice and corn fields and plenty of villagers working them everywhere.

After about 40 minutes, the scenery is slowly being replaced with pain. The name of the game for the day was endurance.

The chair area, is the obvious weak-point, but I got reminded of some other muiscles involved in cycling during the day (and yes,the value of gloves when it comes to mountain-bikes).

 

Still, if you go at the right pace, and maybe get a bit of bike-riding refresher ahead of it, it's a magnificent little trip, with small towns/villages on the way.

Hopefully I'll find some time soon to upload some pictures somewhere and post the link.

 

The last 15 km or so are on a dirt road (last before the Nanzhou village we went to). The road also gets close to the lake, and it's a lot of fun. Specially a lot of fun to ride through the village, with the road completely wet from the last couple of days' rain, smelling clearly of some sewage from the surrounding households involved, and then sprinkle yourself with that mud-cum-whatever's-in-the-mix by the bike's wheels.

 

Not to lose the original point - the guys were perfect gentlemen, keeping pace with me, waiting for me in those moments when I decided to die on the side of the road quietly and motioned them to move on. They even helped me save face a bit - they took regular turns for one of them to fall way behind me, one of them even went the extra mile and went off his bikes on an upward slope.

 

"They" are all from the east part, but not really cohesive: The official translator of the group (translation here means both augmenting my poor vocabulary by some words he knows in English, and more importantly - translating my poor attempts in Chinese to Chinese the others can understand, sometimes using the exact words I used, but I guess with proper tones) was Fengli Wang - 32 from Beijing, very gayish, but I didn't get to figure out what he's doing exactly. Shun Hang Ren is 31 from Han Zhou (near Shanghai) - as far as I managed to understand, he has a company with another friend, designing/ planning train-routes.

Lastly, Kadi Lin was the youngster of the group at 21. From Tai zhou where he is now attending something they translated for me as "senior school" - apparently something in between High-school and college.

 

When we arrived dead-tiered, we had a lovely dinner at the little guest-house we found in the village - just by the entrance to a touristic site, and smack on the lake, with view to some mountains and village-houses.  After dinner, Fengli lead us through a night tour supported by mobile-phone lighting of the tourist scenic zone - why wait to see it tomorrow, while you can go through it blindly for free right now.

 

The next day, I bid them farewell - they wanted to continue down the other side of the lake, completing the whole circle, but that would have meant a longer route, and not really as rewarding, so I opted for the bus/ boat option.

Well, saying "option" here, is a good one - since none of us could figure out if there was indeed an option.

We already realized that there is a bus somewhere, that should be heading all the way to Dali, but that it was very much uncluear if they'd let me on with the bike.

I knew however that I'd find a way, so sent them on.

 

People on the street said there is a bus running along the street that I could just flag down, that would be coming in an hour or so.

The bus eventually came, and as I was flagging it down (along with two other helpful locals), the bus just waved a very clear "no way in hell", and passed on ignoring us. I started to talk about finding a boat, but they suggested that I'll be more lucky with the next one.

The next one did arrive ... this time I left the bicycle a few meters down the road. My helpers said that this was the wrong bus, going somewhere else (on the way), but as the driver saw the discussion (and not the bike) he slowed down, and opened the window asking where I'm looking to go. "Dali". "no problem".

 

Then I showed him the bike. He started to accelerate again, waving a furiuous no-way.

 

Ahh ... this time I had some leverage, since he already slowed down before. So I shouted my pre-prepared magic words "I'll pay!".

 

Tires screeching, dust blowing, the bus stops, driver comes out running towards my bike, cash-lady comes out the other side running towards me to let me know they're going to rip my skin off and suck my blood dry ... which came out to 20 Yuan (just over 2 Euro).

 

Time to give it some extra rest in my bettered lodge, and move on in a couple of days.

Ahh ... for future reference, if someone needs it some day ... this one is called Lazy lodge.

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