Easter

1 Thursday 
Destination-objective: 丽江
Was a travelling day. The border crossing was pretty busy as expected. The arrival into China hall was pretty much full. We used the wrong queue but some other foreigners had followed us making it untenable for the border police lady to make us join the back of the correct queue.
Shenzhen Airport security wanted umbrellas outside of bags for the X-ray inspection. I saw remote-controlled tank in the departure lounge for 240 yuan. Somewhat tempting…

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

The aircraft was an Airbus A319. True to its name in the sense that it was a bus in the air. It was small. It lacked in-seat displays; rather retractable overhead LCDs were used. No headphones were distributed either. We had a stopover at Kunming before heading on to Lijiang. The Kunming-Lijiang leg was ridiculously short, but somewhat necessary with the poor road conditions below. There was enough time for flight attendants to distribute a snack, but not enough time to collect the rubbish.
Lijiang’s airport looks to be a decent attempt at an airport from the outside. The aircraft did actually park at a terminal rather than near a building as was the case in Kunming. However, the luggage carousel and ramp looked like a garage-job.

From Lijiang story

I was a little worried about accommodation, having not booked it prior to leaving. It turned out alright as there were inn employees more worried about not being able to fill rooms.
I thought the single Chinese timezone would muck things up a bit but it seems like having bits of rock stick up a few thousand meters helps block out the sunlight at either end of the day.
Here’s Lijiang old town at night:

From Lijiang story

2 Friday
Destination-objective: 云杉坪
Going to the place where the airport bus seemed like a good idea to get directions, however, we were directed onto the route 8 bus which brought us back to the ancient town. Public transport in Lijiang comes ridiculously frequently. Much better than in Melbourne!
The next step was to take the route 7 bus to mountains. But this wasn’t really a public bus. They offered to hide us from the drive-through ticket booth operators for a lower total fee. It was extremely dodgy in the front passenger seat where one girl curled up in the footwell while the driver’s business associate/bored friend/family member sat in the front passenger seat. Another two hid in the back of the van. We later found out that their friends in a different van were caught and didn’t want to pay the entrance fee. I think it was 160 yuan plus 10 yuan bus rather than 100 yuan dodgily.
Route 7 takes you to the starting point for Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and other lofty places above 4000m in the area.
Every stage presents an opportunity for the Chinese to take more money from you:

From Lijiang story

Bus
Cable car – on the way down there were some Chinese ladies who wanted to take photos with her. That she can speak Mandarin adds to the shock of seeing a white person.

From Lijiang story

Electric cart
Yunshanping, aka Spruce Meadow, was quite a pleasant place when one manages to get away from the hordes of Chinese. It was a nice patch of meadow, so you can actually take photos of the scenery without having too many trees in the way. Some people were taking more serious photos:

From Lijiang story

There was one particularly annoying Chinese lady who initiated a shout/call everytime a cart passed ours on the way back. I think the people on the passing carts were just a bit stunned though.

From Lijiang story

I wonder if this is the ancient Naxi equivalent of ‘back in the kitchen, woman!’

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

Back in town, the view from here feels very strange. I like how the clouds cast little shadows on the mountainside. Also the density of the ancient town is quite staggering. No Australian dream to be transplanted here. The shops are still small even though land is aplenty here.

From Lijiang story

Jade dragon pool made for pretty photos too.

From Lijiang story

Plus there was a treehugger.

From Lijiang story

Plus nightclubs/bars in the ancient town.

From Lijiang story

But I'll refrain from putting in the other photos of translation errors and the like.
Lessons learned during dinner:
Hawkers in Lijiang ancient town come more often than the MTR in Hong Kong
An old lady can use fish to feed a dog. In accepting our refusal to purchase her goods, she requested to feed our leftover fish to her dog.
 
3 Saturday
Destination-objective: 桥头 and hike
We started the day by walking to the express bus station. The lady was quite blunt in saying there weren’t any tickets left for the 8:30 bus and wasn’t forthcoming with more information.  The route 11 bus took us to the other bus station and we waited for the 10:40 Shangrila via Qiaotou. (Route 11 was serviced by double-deckers in a city of one million.)

From Lijiang story

The bus ride was certainly an interesting experience. Excessive use of the horn and smoking were the key points. Otherwise the bus driver was pro. Other road users provided additional entertainment.

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

Well, Qiaotou is a bit of a dump/quarry. There was a guy in a bad suit saying the road was closed but after mentioning the high path he said good luck and let us through, while acknowledging no insurance.
The path up was a bit ambiguous but otherwise uninteresting.
Start of the hike:

From Lijiang story

There was a ticket office but they were taking reduced fees due to the road blasting below. There, the old lady gave us pear but a dust plume blew over and made it dirty. 
From hereon in it was rather scenic – not much to talk about but a lot to soak up in terms of scenery. 

You really don’t need guides and the horses are only necessary if you want to deny yourself of the full hiking experience/exhaustion. Besides, you can look at other people’s horses/guides to see where to go!
There’s a feature called twenty-eight bends on the map, however, it’s unclear where it starts and certainly felt more than twenty-eight switchbacks.
At the top there was another lady selling some snacks and drinks. Another basket of Snickers bars. I bought an orange drink from her, 500mL for 6 yuan. The markup isn’t too bad. The sugary drink wasn’t such a great idea. But that might have been the thinner mountain air kicking in.
I inquired about her situation and she says it’s 7 km to get to work and she’s been in business for 4 years.

From Lijiang story

That evening we stayed at the Tea Horse Guest House. The place did seem a bit big to me. The food was decent. Both aspects were pricey as expected on the side of a river canyon.
4 Sunday
Destination-objective: exit TLG

From Lijiang story

Setting off at the very comfortable time of 9AM, we came across an old man who refused to entertain Agnes’ request for a photo with him. Another one ignored Agnes’ 你好，but replied to me. Hehe. There was some drizzle and the temperature was cooler than the day before. There were plenty of random bridges, waterfalls and villages to cross. Also… Happy time advertisement here:

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

Getting to the actual river level was something else. There was construction work, a really nasty dog to notify the owner that there’s money to collect plus a treacherous path.

Approach	Southern	Central	Central-Northern	Northern
Destination	Zhang	Tina (ladder)	To Sean only	Sean
Cost (yuan)	10	10	5	10

 We avoided the ladder. It didn’t look like a good idea from the pictures.

When we actually got down to the river it was… noisy. It looked like insta-death if you jumped in. Plus there were signs explaining that it would be a likely scenario.

From Lijiang story

There’s a whole collection of signs explaining why you should pay the money. We took Zhang’s path down and headed up towards Sean’s. The path down was clear although steep. However, Sean’s path gets a bit lost in bamboo patches here and there. Also the handrails aren’t secure and they’re only made of wood.

The guy who took our money for the last stretch walked with us. He even took a photo without asking for more money. He was pretty cool about it all – not having to concentrate on the path and keeping his hands behind his back.

I did expect Sean’s guesthouse to be a bit more lively. Perhaps the website made it out to be grander than it actually is.

From Lijiang story

The walls are a tad thin. Hrmm.

I fell on the steps here:

From Lijiang story

Plus they haven’t put in stairs here…

From Lijiang story

5 Monday
Destination-objective: Back to丽江
The van out of Wallnut Grove was organised at Sean’s in the morning and took us past a previous landslide but stopped at another one further down. There was some delay in waiting for works to cease before we could rush across.

From Lijiang story

Along the way, workers were building the edges of the road and safety barricades, as well as dropping explosives.

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

The driver didn’t let this kid hitchhike:

From Lijiang story

She caught up to us because of the landslide-delay.
Another van (more money) got us to Qiaotou. It being Qing Ming public holiday, all of the public buses were conveniently full. More money went into a van back to Lijiang. There was a little bit of bargaining involved but I think if they didn’t take so many friends/family then the mass reduction would have saved them money.

Fail driving:

From Lijiang story

At 1520 two platoons of PLA with brooms march by.

From Lijiang story

China.
I also get my stash of Lay’s Cool Cucumber chips.

6 Tuesday
Destination-objective: random villages

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

This day was dedicated to biking. I really don’t like the way Chinese traffic works, especially when I’m a cyclist. Anyway… the villages were kinda dead and selling the same crap. The old doctor was funny to listen to. He didn’t greet me until we were just about to leave because he “thought I was Chinese.” I thought that the shops here were just part of the Baisha frescos place, but it turns out it was Baisha village itself. Fail.

From Lijiang story

Oh yes, more randoms dressed up.

From Lijiang story

Here’s the sun at 1600 hours.

From Lijiang story

And I got epic sunburn on the back of my hands and also a camera strap line on my neck.

7 Wednesday
Destination-objective: Hong Kong
Most of the day was spent bumming around in Lijiang old town.
The bus to the airport is a just-in-time service.
The airport is typical Chinese from the inside. There were long queues for security clearance until somebody bothered to open a second lane. They don’t ask for belts to be taken off (unlike the Chinese embassy in Hong Kong) so the scanning frame will invariably go off for me. They also requested that I take my umbrella out of my bag.

The inflight meal was quite decent.

From Lijiang story

From Lijiang story

Most of my chips were shattered in luggage. There’s more cool than cucumber taste. My coughing stopped in Shenzhen – I don’t think the mountain air helped (oh crap new topic at the end).