We woke up semi-early and went for breakfast at the hotel's revolving restaurant on the top floor. The restaurant wasn't revolving, but we had a good view of the city. There appeared to be several observation towers around the city, though it's hard to say for sure what they were. When we entered, we asked the waiter to find us a seat, and we walked backwards and forwards a few times through and around the restaurant. A few minutes later he turned around and asked us if we were looking for a table. Sometimes this country can be very confusing. The breakfast was actually ok, a reasonable attempt at a European breakfast though Lloyd lamented the absence of baked beans.
We turned up way too early at the airport as there was zero traffic. We passed a big chunk of the time on the massage chairs which I normally walk past thinking they are for idiots. Surprisingly, they kind of work. You have to make sure you position yourself properly if you want your lower back done, though however your position yourself it does manage to find the exact position of your back side in order to jab it pointlessly and uncomfortably. The chairs also make an attempt at massaging your legs, but the best they manage is to grip them so fiercely that you think you'll get DVT before you even make it to the plane.
The flight itself took 40 minutes, which made me feel like I was killing the planet just for fun. In comparison, the taxi from the airport to our hotel took 70 minutes and cost £10. This was aided by our having a taxi driver who was clearly thoroughly sick of living. The streets of Shanghai are slightly scary - nobody has any patience whatsoever. Drivers in the Dali region are frightened to death of every other driver. Whenever they drive near a car or person, they will hoot their horn several times so that everyone knows everyone else is there. This guy took it to the next level however. He can't have agreed, because he gave us his business card when arrived at the hotel. I think drinking Shanghai tap water would be a quicker suicide method.
The hotel was huge but completely lacking in style. The room was very comfortable with a view of the pool outside. It was empty and we immediately went to the pool and relaxed on the loungers for a bit. We moved into the pool and Lloyd has his underwater camera so we got a few shots before some Chinese boys came out and took all their clothes off. This generally makes it feel a bit wrong to have your camera out, so this put pay to the photography.
We took a walk towards the town proper, walking past a lot of shops that mostly sold solar heaters or mopeds. Dali is split into two parts - an 'old town' surrounded by city walls, where we were to spend most of our time, and a 'new town' where most of the normal people seemed to live. We took in some sights of the old town - mainly the nearby mountains and the very touristy shops and restaurants. Again, the tourists were almost exclusively Chinese. We went to Bird Bar which was apparently the first Western bar in Dali, and considered doing a crawl of the pubs based on this chronological ordering. The place was exactly how I'd expect a backpackers bar to be - incredibly laid back and self-satisfied. We walked around the outside of the city walls and took lots of photos. It was very rural - Dali was by far the smallest place we had been to.
For dinner we found a place that did 'across the bridge noodles' which is a famous local-ish dish. They give you a big bowl of broth, and you put the ingredients in and wait for the broth to cook them. It was good but too filling. We then went for a drink at Bad Monkey. We had some Dunkelweizen and were beaten at pool by a local girl by the name of Lula.
We walked back to the hotel and enjoyed the cool of the evening. It was like an English summer evening, in fact Dali seems to be very cool after Shanghai. Several of the places we walked past had prostitutes sitting inside on sofas watching the TV waiting for the punters to come to them, I guess - a bit of a weird surprise.
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