Di da di da di da Lijiaaang!

Lijiang Old Town by night

Stayed in a really quiet and contemplative hotel called Zen Garden.

Dad dancing with a bunch of grandmas next to a mountainside temple.

Some of the more "adventurous" cuisine in Lijiang Old Town.  Jim tried the roasted grasshoppers.  I tried one.  Feels like eating shell-on shrimp.

Chilling out in an expat haunt.

Some beautiful Naxi artwork

Mom and I at a Naxi minority shrine and heritage museum. Somehow it reminded me of the Burnaby Village Museum.

All photos on this post courtesy of my mom.

Shilin

On our last full day in Kunming, we decided to go tot Shilin, otherwise known as the Stone Forest.  I remember back in my childhood, my family went to a miniature park called "Splendid China" in Florida.  In that park, there were large models of many of the sights to see in China - one of which was Shilin.  It was the one I remembered the most.  I always wanted to go to the Stone Forest ever since that moment, and now the opportunity arose!

We agreed to take the hostel's rented vehicle to get there.  To decrease the cost per person, however, Mom did some recruiting.  She managed to get a German fellow named Asef and a Columbian woman named Lina to come with. Great making new travel friends!

Bert, Jim, Lina, Pat, and Asef at Shilin.

Once we got there, we were met with hordes of people and tour buses.  The entire forest was surrounded by a road in which golf carts drove through with Chinese tourists inside taking stops to take pictures at key locations.  Our group had none of that.  We walked.  And we saw a lot more. 

We went off the main road to go check out the "Eternal Mushroom" stone formation.  No tourist on a golf cart could get there, unless they decided to break away from the pack.  I have to say the Eternal Mushroom didn't really look like a mushroom at all, but at least we walked through some stunning scenery along the way.  Again, most tourists at Shilin did not get to see such things.

Not the eternal mushroom, but this was a better picture to post!

Walking through the trails away from the main road, we eventually came to a cavernous region of the forest.  We had to walk through places where we had to take off our backpacks and crouch down because it was too narrow to pass through.

No-backpack Asef takes point and leads us through a narrow crevice. Everyone else struggles with their backpacks.

Jim going though a big rock. Believe or not, it's part of the trail to get to another part of the forest.

On the other side of the rock.

 Getting back to the road, we walked towards the hordes of tourists, knowing very well that they only scratched the surface of this place.  We were greatly amused by the Chinglish descriptions on various plaques and billboards before we ate lunch and drove back to Kunming.

Shilin was one of the highlights of my HK-Macau-Kunming-Lijiang-Shanghai trip.  When I go back to Shilin with Cathy one day, we will definitely walk it for sure.

Kunming

I'm finally back in the furnace that is Wuhan.  This heat is killing me!  It's about 30 degrees here, and it's not even lunch time.  Better to have stayed in Kunming.  It's a really clean city and the weather is very temperate.

Relaxing at the hostel with a free beer after a rough (and late) flight from Hong Kong.

Vendors from ethnic minorities sell dried snacks all around Green Lake.

A Buddhist temple on the hills surrounding Kunming

Our black cab driver suggested we try this local Kunming noodle dish. Dad was nervous about it because it involved raw meat, but it was delicious and I didn't get the runs.

Mr. Wang, the blind masseur, massaging Mom.

Dad looking at photography in an art gallery.

Wine bar in the art district.

We planned to go to Shilin (The Stone Forest) in the evening of day two.  The hostel front desk offered a driver for 700Y.  There were 4 of us.  Mom reduced the cost per person by managing to get two other people to join us, a young German man and a young Colombian woman.  Both lived in China for a while. Our trip to Shilin proved to be quite the adventure, but that's another story...