Jinghong to Dali

I found my hard cot again, here in Dali.

Yesterday's wait for the afternoon's bus was made easy by a Los-Angeles originated gentleman. I didn't really get to ask his name - I was working more on my listenng skills, you could say.

 

As I finished sending the post yesterday (at Mekong Cafe), I moved to a table in the shade for some Mango+Passion-fruit juice, and my Chinese vocabulary notebook.

As it happens, the table I chose was next to the gentleman's table, from which he was heartily talking to Greg (the French owner). When Greg made a move and disappeared somewhere he changed to my direction and asked "so where are you from?".

And that was it, I had my next 2~3 hours filled with Israeli war stories. The guys is about 53 these days, from Hollywood, LA (although he looked quite settled into the place). Sporting a black Harley-styled undershirt with the slogan Xishuangbanna riders (or something like that, could have been Jinghong or Yunnan riders).

 

Presbyterian as he might be, in '73, as a Marine, he felt something was wrong about the way people reacted to the Vietnam war, and affectionately was listening to what was happening in Israel. When he met a 25-yo olive-skinned Israeli lady-officer in California, he asked her if there's something he could do.

Before long he was apparently in Israel doing some logistics downloading of American shipments, and before long - he found himself charging as part of a Tank brigade towards Damascus. Something like that. I could not really follow all the details - it went through a whole lot of weaponary acronyms - he seemed to assume that as an Israeli I would know of any weapon ever used in the Israeli military history - all I could do was to try and figure out when he was talking about a Tank, a rifle, or an airborne thing from the context (as much as I got it). On top of the weaponry details there were stories of people he got to kill (quite detailed, mind you), and to wrap it up nicely, he was apparently in good terms with some big names in Israeli history (such as Arik Sharon, Rafoul, Haim Bar-Lev, and a few other supposedly big-time brigadiers who's names I never heard myself).

 

I later took the bus. Some bits of anxiety as the bus was late, and I was not sure if that was the case, or I missed it, or just bought the wrong ticket.

 

Eventually on the bus - an excellent choice of route - the direct Jinghong-Dali route. That's opposed to taking a bus to Kunming and changing to a Kunming-Dali bus (as some would recommend). The road supposedly takes 15 hours, and it indeed only took us 16, but apparently it can take at time much much longer. Specially if the road get blocked by mud-slides, and you get to stay in another place on the way. In our case - no mudslides, but we were held up a bit in traffic jams (the route goes through some very narrow jungle and later mountain roads, and is quite heavy with buses and big trucks trying to go in both directions. Another small hickup was a police raid on the bus at some point during the night - just to see that we're all fine.

 

But really, since the bus goes through these roads, you get to see some nice Jungle views, villages, and in the morning approching Dali - some nice mountain-side fields.

 

Anyway, arrived in Dali - and after some hostel browsing, settled on what might be the worst option of all that I've seen. And no, not trying to prove a point. They're all priced about the same, but the other options that I saw all had nice soft beds (one had queen-size comfy beds within the dorms option), while this one has hard bunks again.

So why... this is the only hostel in which I saw Chinese travelers, rather than only other foreigners. Not sure how much communication will be happening, and my back my decide in favor of me moving again, but for now.

One does wonder why Chinese would choose this least confortable (for the same price) option. Maybe I'm missing something myself.