Lijiang, China: Disasterland. But Still Pretty

Maybe it's not fair that I call Lijiang "Disasterland," because every disaster that befell me there was maybe kind of my own fault.


What It's All About:
Lijiang is a super-old, World Heritage city that is incredibly historic and pretty.  It has an ancient system using waterways that is still in use today - making it one of the original water villages. More importantly, it is just one of those places that you enter and feel like you're in a different world. Much of the old architecture and such has been preserved because it is a World Heritage Site, so you can really get an actual feel of how it used to be.

Wandering the streets of the old city = dreamy

With its preserved status, however, there is also one tiny downfall - tourists, tourists everywhere.  Along with that comes all the cons of having a high-tourist area - you actually have to pay a hefty fee to enter the old city itself, and many of the old buildings have been converted to tourist shops and cafes.  If you can get over that part of it, however, Lijiang is seriously the prettiest.

You can't hate on these lovely (algae-filled) canals

Sliiiiiight problem with my time in Lijiang was that a series of travel disasters befell me, all at the same time, and all in Lijiang.

Disaster #1:

• My bus into Lijiang from Dali was late. It's only about 2.5 hours, but I had booked the latest bus, meaning I didn't roll into town until about 11pm.  I took a taxi to the outskirts of Old Town, but had to walk to the hostel because cars aren't allowed in the entire Old Town complex (which is quite large).  I had the location of the hostel on my maps, but unbeknownst to me, it had pinned the wrong location.
• 30 minutes later, I was hopelessly lost. Not to mention on a dark road with no cars (aka other taxis I could take).  I finally located a parking attendant playing on his phone, had him call my hostel for me on his phone, and then got instructions on where to go to get a new taxi to the hostel (apparently I was beyond walking distance by that point). When I finally got to a lit area where there were taxis, the first two that approached tried to rip me off because of how late it was. I finally located one that was reasonably priced, and had her call my hostel to figure out where to take me. It was seriously over an hour later....and she dropped me off at the exact same spot my first taxi had dropped me an hour earlier.  I had been in the right spot, but had taken the wrong turns. The owner of the hostel met me at the taxi this time to ensure I wouldn't be lost. Sorry, mister - I'm sure you have better things to be doing at midnight (he assured me it happens all the time since they're located wrong on the map).

Despite being dark and lost, I still had time to appreciate how pretty the city was....??

Disaster #2:

• The next morning, I had made plans with a couple girls at the hostel to get brunch. I also had to book a bus out of Lijiang back to Kunming, and went down to the front desk to get that sorted quickly before brunch. Upon having to pay for the bus, I looked into my wallet.....and couldn't find my ATM card. Or my credit card. Both. Missing.
• Panic.
• Panic some more.
• These poor girls I had just met were waiting for me for brunch, and I was running around upending all my things and rummaging through everything and ranting about missing both my cards. I retraced my steps and realized that I don't think my last hostel in Dali had returned my credit card after I'd paid the room fee.  I had the front desk of my new hostel call my old hostel to check for my card.  AND THEY HAD IT.  (Apparently, the lady at my old hostel had been like "what does her card look like?? We have so, so many of them here!"  THEY HAVE A HABIT OF FORGETTING TO RETURN CREDIT CARDS. Seriously, that hostel was a hot, hot mess.  Even hotter of a mess than I sound like right here).  
• My old Dali hostel worked out that they had a guest who was headed to Lijiang this day - they said they'd send along the card with that guest, and I could meet him at the Lijiang bus terminal. But I had to come back to the hostel at 1pm and call him to make sure it was ok and work out logistics.
• So I went to brunch. Then I had to run to the Bank of China across town to get some of my emergency USD changed to Chinese Yuan because I had no cash left, no credit card, and no ATM card (the girls came with me. They are angels).  

Disaster #3:

• I ran back to the hostel at 1pm to call my old hostel to talk to the guest that was headed to Lijiang - and SMALL WORLD, it ended up being Chen, the guy who was on my lake tour in Dali the day before! I know Chen! I'm WeChat friends with Chen! We made plans to meet at the bus station at 5pm when he got in. Problem is, I don't have a Chinese phone and couldn't reach him if the bus was late (and he had to head to the Lijiang airport directly from the bus station to catch a flight), or if we had problems meeting up or anything. It was so nerve-wracking.
• Of course, around 5pm, my taxi driver on the way to the bus terminal sneakily took a loop to pick up other customers and made me late to go meet Chen at the bus station.  I seriously almost lost it at him but he kept lowering the price of my taxi and assured me I'd be on time. (Spoiler: I wasn't).
• I flew into the bus terminal about 10 minutes late - no bus to be found. I asked around - and the man said the bus from Dali had arrived a long time ago. Apparently it'd gotten in early.
• Panic.
• Ran around like a homeless person until I finally found a lady willing to lend me her phone (seriously, I've learned that when you approach a stranger in China and use your heavily accented Chinese to ask to borrow their phone to make a call, they either look at you like you're an axe murderer, or they pretend not to hear you and scoot away).  I called Chen, freaking out because I thought he'd left because he had a really tight plane to catch.  
• AND RELIEF. Turns out Chen's flight was delayed (THERE IS A GOD. I KNOW THERE IS) and so he was just next door having noodles.  And then there he appeared, with my credit card in hand!  ANGELS.
• ATM card is still missing. I think I lost it in Shanghai.  But I have a backup because I am a prepared (yes still somehow disastrous) traveler!  So all's well that end's well.  Back to regularly scheduled programming. (Only one more month, Connie - hold yourself together).

Cliffnotes of the Day:

• Well, besides running around like a crazy person doing weird arbitrary errands I shouldn't have had to do if I had my life together (i.e. heading across town to the bus terminal and back, heading to the other side of town for the one bank that would change my USD, etc.), I did really get to enjoy some time in Lijiang as well.  I swear.  I really liked it.  

Canals, lanterns, and pretty buildings as far as the eye can see

• I spent my time in Lijiang with some lovely new hostel friends (the ones who were saints in insisting on waiting for me for brunch, accompanying me to the world's farthest bank, and waiting for me to return from the bus station to get dinner).

New hostel friends (L to R) are Helene from Denmark, and Aurelie from France (but living in Massachusetts). We walked up to the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (fave name ever), a famous sight in Lijiang. We are actually standing at the most famous viewpoint ever, which looks highly unimpressive because the dense clouds are actually covering (what I've been told is) a beautiful snow-covered mountain.  Darn you, clouds.

However, the area was a really nice park that you could wander around.  

With very pretty, very historic (but reconstructed) temples all around!

• After our "hike" to the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, we spent a lot of time just walking through the Old Town.  Lijiang is one of those cities that's so, so lovely to wander through - there's alleys full of people and tourists and shops and noisy performances, and then you can take a turn to a tiny little picturesque alley with no people, and get a glimpse of actual life there.  It's absolutely stunning either way. Photo dump of Lijiang to commence.

The entrance to the old city is very grandly displayed.  Signs a city is way over-touristed: there is a grand entrance to enter it. With ticket booths.

I can't read this (not that I have the patience to), but I imagine this plaque is boasting of the World Heritage status. Oh, and that's a World Heritage logo on the top.

Ahhh, but you are so pretty!! Dragon head water spouts?!? SIGN ME UP.

Hoards of people

Tofu that they top with spring onions and peppers and deep fry with sesame seeds. Delicious. A little oily, but that never hurt anyone (Chinese people looooove their oil. There's always an unappetizing pool of it left over at the bottom of every dish).

Dream.

I bought a printed shawl #soauthentic

I could have taken a billion photos of this city. Too bad I only succeeded in taking about a million.

Some local guys offered to take this photo for us and when handing the camera back to me, asked "Are you their tour guide?"  I'm going to assume it's because I carry myself with an air of authority.

Seriously, such BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS.

Four flavors of Oreos. Another reason I know heaven exists.  I may have purchased the birthday cake flavored Oreos and eaten the entire tube for dinner (IN MY DEFENSE, I WAS STRESSED).

Waterways everywhere!

This street was so pretty. And photos like these are what make me miss my iPhone more than ever.

There's also construction going on everywhere here too - I think they're continually expanding to accommodate the crazy tourism.  This was like the opposite of Yuanyang. My hostel owner said he's owned his hostel for 10 years now, back when Lijiang was lesser-known and more quaint, and the boom in tourism since has been so crazy that he has considered closing the hostel and going somewhere else.

Though are these streets not a photographer's dream??

Construction means one side of the road is entirely covered with particle board.

I only took this photo because Aurelie and I went to get our hair washed (I had told her how amazing and cheap hair washing is in China; see Chengdu post) - and they curled my hair!  And for one day, I didn't look homeless!

Dusk over Lijiang rooftops

For dinner, the three of us went to a restaurant our hostel owner recommended, called Daily Fresh. You can tell it's legit because there was a huge line of people waiting outside at all times. We waited forever. And were rewarded with the most delicious meal EVER.  There were a ton of local Yunnan specialties, which included some braised tofu and bacon things. And a very authentic-looking wooden rice bucket (I'd like those boys to still think I could be tour guide now....)

Nightfall - they light the buildings up, in true tourist-pleasing form

• After two days in Lijiang, I hauled myself back to Kunming to catch a flight I had previously booked to Hong Kong.  If I'd had more time though (THEME OF MY ENTIRE TRIP), there are so many cool places I could have explored in Yunnan!  Near Lijiang is this stunning hiking gorge called Tiger Leaping Gorge (with a name like that, how could it not be life-changing), and then even further on is the city of Shangri-La!  Which is apparently beautiful and mountainous and like being in Tibet, without actually being in Tibet. Side note, did you know China does not let you enter Tibet by yourself if you're a foreigner??  They make you join an approved tour. It's like North Korea. Crazy.

Ahhh, the overnight bus back to Kunming was an upgrade!  They had three rows of single beds, instead of having you sleep THISCLOSE to a stranger right next to you. Never mind that the aisles between the beds were basically the narrowest things ever - like once you entered the aisle, there was no turning back. Literally.

I feel like here, I have to bid farewell to the Yunnan province as a whole since it's my last post here.  All I have to say is: you have to visit this province if you're in China!  It feels absolutely nothing like the rest of China, and the places you see and visit and go are such different experiences and so, so different!  There are a TON more backpackers in this part of China than I've encountered anywhere else (seriously, every other hostel I've stayed at in China had a very weird, Chinese-only kind of vibe) - and the hostels are much more like the hostels you'll find in other parts of the world.  Also, if you come here in summer, you will not melt. You will in the rest of China. Really.

Bye, Yunnan! Bye moto taxis and beautiful ethnic tribes (DIVERSITY) and cool weather and backpacker-friendliness!  

Kunming, China: I Get My Phone Stolen

So off I head to the Southwestern province of Yunnan - this province borders Vietnam, Laos, Tibet, etc., and is incredibly ethnically diverse (well, as ethnically diverse as China gets) and different than the rest of China.  Yunnan is home to over 15 ethnic tribes that were originally settled in this area before the Han Chinese came and took over. As is such, it's a super interesting place to visit once you've been bumming around "regular China" for a bit.

I started my Yunnan adventures in the capital city of Kunming, which I flew to from Shanghai.



What It's All About:
I'm having trouble describing a place that I only want to refer to as "The Evil Place Where My Phone Got Stolen" (a fact which my title gave away).  I'm sure Kunming is lovely, though. Actually, I did really like the city - or what little of it I saw while running around getting my phone nicked and then having to replace it, anyhow.

The minute I stepped foot into Yunnan, it felt different. First off, it's lovely and cool here (it's higher altitude, which makes it totally dreamy, weather-wise) - it's the first time since I've been in China that I haven't had a steady stream of sweat running down my back.  The people are also noticeably different - they tend to be darker and more diverse-looking, and many of the tribes wear colorful, patterned clothing. This means no one has commented on my skin color at all.  Win!

The Green Lake Park in Central Kunming

Kunming is the capital of Yunnan - as is such, it's a great base to explore the rest of the province. The city itself doesn't have too many must-sees in it (there are a couple lovely pagodas and parks and shopping streets and such, but nothing too out-of-the-ordinary), but it's a good place to start to get your bearings. And to replace lost phones.



The Stolen Phone Saga:
So let's get right to it, since it happened on my first day in Kunming. There I was, walking down a busy street, when I decided to get in line for meat sticks.  Because I love meat sticks.

Exhibit A. I love meat sticks. Clearly I seem to have no idea where the camera on my new phone is.

I literally reached into my purse for my phone to check on some directions, then I put the phone into my jacket pocket (because you wear jackets in Yunnan!!) for two minutes while dealing with the meat stick transaction. I walked away from the counter - and then I knew instantly. I felt down for my phone and everything, but it was gone. It happened that fast.

There were a bunch of incredibly shady-looking characters loitering around the meat stick stand - a man, a lady, and a teenage-looking girl. They were all standing apart from each other, but they looked shady AF and they were seriously standing around, not doing anything, not waiting for anyone - just standing there and looking suspicious. I asked all three of them separately - basically was like "Hey I noticed you've been standing here awhile and I just got my phone stolen - did you see anything?"  The man rudely asked why he would have seen anything and then turned away from me, the lady shrugged her shoulders and moved on, and the teenage girl kind of freaked out and started backing away the moment I started to approach her.  I'm sure there was some kind of ring going on, looking back on it. But there was nothing I could do about it or prove it, in any case, so I was forced to walk away. Honestly, it was devastating - my phone is my life while I'm traveling - but I was oddly calm at that moment.  I back up my photos constantly because of this blog (so I'd only lost a day's worth of photos), and I'm due for an upgrade as soon as I get back to the States anyhow - so it could have been much, much worse.  It still didn't stop me from wishing that my iPhone thief would fall down and hurt himself badly enough to regret his actions forevermore, but not enough to cause death. I'm not a sadist, people.

I spent the entire next day hauling myself out to an area of town that my hostel told me sold a lot of cellular phones. And now I'm basically a Chinese phone expert.  The best Chinese phone brands are Vivo, Oppo, and Huawei. Samsung is way expensive, and iPhones are alone in their own world of "completely and utterly unaffordable" (they don't get those contract discounts or anything on iPhones, so they have to pay full price of $800-1000 for a new iPhone).  I spent my day staring blankly at phone salespeople explaining features I couldn't understand (I have to confess I don't even fully understand things like processing speed and RAM and phone functionalities in English, nevertheless in Chinese) -  I seriously was just like "I want a camera and internet!"  

Also, walking around on the streets, you see tons of people holding signs that say "secondhand phones" - I tentatively asked one of them what he was selling, and he produced a very new-looking Samsung phone. He was selling it for less than 1/4 of what the same phone was selling for in the store, which made me wary.  Later on, I asked a store employee how those people in the streets could sell secondhand phones for so cheap. She told me that they either are selling fake phones (with shoddy hardware), or stolen phones. I (half-jokingly) suggested to her that if I asked every single person on the street selling secondhand phones to see their inventory, maybe I'd find my stolen phone!  She looked horrified at the suggestion.  Apparently nottttt recommended.

Anyhoo, to wrap up the phone saga, I am now the (not-so-proud) new owner of a gold Huawei Honor phone!  The camera works (in that you can kind of tell what I'm trying to take a photo of, barely). That's the only positive I can say about it right now, as I've had to take a crash course in how to work an Android phone, and despite having changed the language of the phone to English, all the error messages still pop up in Chinese. Which causes me to press a lot of rando buttons in hopes the message will go away. I've probably inadvertently signed up for thousands of dollars worth of additional services on accident.  I can also say, however, that I bartered the phone price down enough (and got the man to throw in an extra SD card, a free cover, and a free case) that the man who sold it to me grumbled that being an American must make me an extra-cutthroat bargainer, so that pleased me.  

Sorry for the long-winded story, but to warn you all going forward - the photos from here on out are going to markedly decline in quality (I miss my iPhooooone!), and I no longer have access to Whatsapp, Line, or Snapchat (Chinese phones doesn't support Google-related services! Booooo), so sorry if anyone has tried to reach me on any of those mediums.  Otherwise, business as usual (she said, as she sobbed silent tears into her tea).

Cliffnotes of the Day:

• So the phone saga probably took a day and a half of my time in Kunming, but I did manage to take some time to wander around otherwise. Here is an amalgamation of rando photos from around Kunming (though probably not representative of Kunming at all, honestly).  Most of them are me testing out my new phone.

THE LAST PHOTO MY POOR IPHONE EVER TOOK. RIP.
My first morning, I wandered a market near my hotel that was CRAY. It was filled with animals in cages (the dogs above made me especially sad. I wanted to buy them all). But there were also huge cages filled with geese, and turtles, and doves, and frogs, and fish, etc.  It was the craziest, most in-your-face, not-meant-for-tourists market ever.

Old men playing chess in the streets. I'm basically just testing out my new phone.

This is the Green Lake Park in Kunming, which I spent an hour wandering on the nicest, sunniest day ever

A local man playing violin in the park

Everyone was riding car-shaped paddle boats

This kid running on the giant floating hamster wheel was incredibly entertaining

More chess tactics. You have to visit a Chinese park, honestly - the feeling of community, and of people singing, and old men gambling, and groups of ladies dancing, and families with children everywhere - it's the greatest.

This bridge was highly inefficient

This man was writing beautiful Chinese characters with water and giant sponge brushes. He could have been writing a disgruntled political diatribe for all I understood, but I thought it was so pretty

And then there was a dried foods market, 75% of the food unidentifiable to me

Selling blankets

People dancing in the park. In Kunming, I saw numerous instances where everyone was holding hands to dance in a circle, which I WHOLEHEARTEDLY APPROVE and love.

These couples were all waltzing and the woman in the middle was just getting down on her own.

• Sorry for the lack of photos and/or info. Now that I'm back in business with a phone and a camera, things will be (semi) normal starting next post!  Please reassure me that you don't see any difference at all in the photo quality. Do it.  But honestly, if 13.5 months in, and the worst thing that's happened to me just happened, I think it's all going to be ok.

Fun Facts of the Day:

• Moto taxis are back!  If there's one thing I truly love, it's a good moto taxi. You won't be walking down the street any longer than a minute before a motorcycle will stop and offer you a ride. Sweet, sweet bliss.
• There's an incredibly pretty sight called the Stone Forest near Kunming - it's accessible as a day trip, and while crazy-touristy, it's apparently stunning. I didn't have time (see Exhibit "I spent a whole day replacing my phone"), but I would have loved to add it onto my trip.

This is what the Stone Forest looks like!

• I can't understand a single word the locals are saying here - their accents are super suuuper heavy.