Rice, bricks and marijuana

We gave up on trains.

After a 3-hour flight, smooth and comfortable, we land in Kunming, Yunnan province, and take a bus to Dali. Dali is a small and peaceful town settled between a lake and a mountain at an altitude of 1900m. (which will trigger a few sleepless nights.) (ok we blame it on the altitude, but the collective insomnia might also have been due to the 20 roosters crowing from 3am or to the noise of the machine to shake the rice that was set on the roof of our neighbors and started working at 5.30am).

Fortunately for us, Dali is also the place where we find the best coffee we've had in a long time.

We are in the middle of the rice harvest: people are working in the fields all day, cutting the crops, threshing and cleaning it by hand or with a machine, and then letting it dry under the sun.

(what we're ready to do to see people working in the fields...)

We see rice drying everywhere - every centimeter of flat ground is used...

even in the air :-)

Anyone wants to help?

Then, when it's not rice, it's bricks. In every street, alongside the highways, even in small villages, there's a brick or tile factory, and a wall under construction.

But Dali at night is a whole different story. You're innocently enjoying your happy hour beer on a terrace when an old lady in traditional costume comes near you with silver jewelry for sale. We politely decline her offer. Of course, it doesn't work. Luckily, we now know the infaillible weapon: "bu yao" (= "don't want"). As usual, it works perfectly and the lady goes away. Only to come back 10 seconds later. She leans towards us, and whispers "smoke ganja?" After 15 seconds of stupefied silence - an eighty-year-old lady is offering to sell us weed? - we finally get ourselves together and repeat "bu yao ganja".

After a few relaxing days, we decide to do a one-day hike in the mountains above Dali. We contact a trekking agency run by two French guys and they set up an average-difficulty hike (level 2-3 on a scale of 5) with a chinese local guide for the next day. We don't know it yet, but the hike will be remembered as "the hike de la muerte". At 8 am, we're ready to go. The guide (exceptionally tall for a Chinese, and with very long legs - yes it has its importance when you think about his hiking pace) comes to pick us up at the guesthouse and tells us that we should really leave straight away - no time to go to the bathroom. We figure impatience is probably a characteristic of the Chinese culture and follow him. We'll understand later that we had to start quick to have enough time for our 8-hour hike. After a first half hour in the rice fields, struggling to keep our balance to avoid falling from the narrow path into the mud, we start to climb. Two hours of climbing later (on a VERY steep path made of muddy and slippery rocks) and 2 pounds of sweat lighter, we arrive at our first stop.

Our guide makes us understand that we have 20 minutes of rest before starting hiking again. 2 hours 1/2 and 1700m of climbing in the same condition, half running to keep up with our guide (and never knowing when we would arrive at the top as the guide kept saying "one hour" - we realised afterwards that it was probably the only English word he knew to tell the time), we finally have a well-deserved 30-min lunch break, before going back down, trying not to break our legs on the way down. We all agree that we can safely say it was the most challenging hike we've ever done. And if you think in a pushing-your-limits perspective, probably the best one :-) We don't even want to know what a level-5 hike would be.

"is that where we're going??"

"please... wait..."

Maybe we'll change our mind about the ganja? Isn't supposed to ease the pain??

Our next and last stop in China is Yuangyang.

The region is well-known for its rice terraces. Not much to say, the pictures say it all.

And of course, a few gems:

There seem to be a small problem with signs in English here. We passed a few good ones on the highways: "weigh statino", "emergency brake lane vehicle self" or "forgot lane"... Putting the letters in the right order is a real challenge here.

And the menus are the best:

We have two hypothesis:

a) they don't care, and therefore don't ask someone who would know;

b) there's one translator working all over China who has a lot of fun.

Any other idea?

Comments

[Nat]

Trop bien de te lire, beaucoup riz aussi!Photos magnifiques et manière d'écrire qui donne vraiment envie de vous rejoindre pour un petit bout de voyage! Pour la question de la fin, je vote la réponse B et tire mon chapeau a celui qui a fait ça, il a du et doit encore être en train de bien se fendre la poire!

Prenez soin de vous chicas!
Bisous
Nat

[Sab]

Great post as always, very funny and easy to understand and picture your wonderful experience....and, talking of pictures, pfiou, they take my breath away! You have to send me the one of night time Yuangyang, I want a poster of it!!!
Well done!
Sab

[sabine]

Petite question en passant, l'agence de trekking, c'était "Amiwa Trek"?