Getting Better and Better

Just a quick update (more details to come later)...we moved on from Yangshuo to a little town called Dali via an overnight train to Kunming and then a bus to Dali. Yangshuo is in an otherworldly landscape, but after the first day, the hordes of tourists started to get to us. Domestic tourism is booming, and the streets were packed with Chinese travelers, mainly in large tour groups. Dali is a lovely place with old city walls and Bai minority architecture, and our guesthouse rocked, so it was a nice change from Yangshuo. But again, tourists were everywhere! Aside from one barbershop, we didn't see a single shop in the old town that didn't cater to tourists--all seemed to be restaurants, snack shops, tourist agencies, souvenir shops, and so on.

This morning we took a short bus ride (3.5 hours) to Lijiang, and it's the best stop yet. The tourists are still here, but somehow not as noticeable, maybe because it's just so amazing here that it cancels them out. Tomorrow morning we leave to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge, about 1 hour out of Lijiang. We'll hike for a couple of days and then come back to town for a day or two. Tuesday is our last day in the southwest; we fly to Chengdu that night. We would have preferred to take a train or bus (i.e., save money), but Lijiang is isolated enough that we would have had to take an overnight bus to Kunming and then an overnight train to Chengdu, which would take a couple of days and only save us $70 (not chump change, but considering the alternative, I'd say it's more than worth it!). We'll see the pandas in Chengdu, and after that we only have 1 or 2 more stops until we get back to Beijing, hopefully by the end of next week.