We Found Shangri-La (香格里拉 ) !
Posted On Saturday, April 14, 2007 at at 1:10 AM by AlvinAfter much debate between the world's experts and scholars, the exact location of THE Shangri-La was decided to be in the Yunnan province of China. Previously, India and Nepal also laid claims to this accolade. The town of Shangri-La (now also known as 中甸) itself had a frontier feel about it and quite a dust bowl, but the outlying mountains and highlands made up for it.
We arrived in the pouring rain, after the bus journey from Lijiang, as was typical in this place during this time of the year and stayed in a old styled (read Commi !) type hotel where we were grateful for its electric (but safe, I think) blanket and hot water bottles. We quickly moved to a business hotel down the dusty road for some modern comfort the day after.
A large Tibetan population can be found here together with interesting Tibetan-style temples. We enjoyed our stay here as the most northerly stop of our Yunnan exploration. We visited the famous 松赞林寺 as well as spending some free and easy times hiking in the spectacular wilderness of the 伊拉草原 where Tibetan temples abound.
Yunnan Trio - Kunming 昆明, Dali 大理 And Lijiang 麗江
Posted On Sunday, April 8, 2007 at at 3:05 AM by Alvin
After the interesting bus journey from He Kou (河口) near the Vietnam-China boarder, we spent a few interesting days in Kunming (昆明), the capital city of the Yunnan province. We visited the famous 金馬碧雞坊 and 圓通寺. We also enjoyed greatly the peaceful and relatively quiet roads in the city; because all motorbikes in Kunming were electric !Journeying on from Kunming and reached relaxing Dali (大理). Dali used to be a powerful City State in ancient times and had a number of important Buddhist temples. We took a cable car up to the 點蒼山 national park for a 5 hours hike and just generally loved this manageable town with its easy-going pace and vibes.
Lijiang (麗江) was full of interesting alley ways and canals but packed up to its armpits (maybe even up to its eyebrows I think) with tourists; luckily we managed to find peace and quiet when we ventured out of Lijiang (where lazy tourists were few and far between) to the Jade Dragon Mountain (玉龍雪山) Range and The First Yangtze River Turn (長江第一彎) at the quiet village of Shigu (石鼓).
The First Yangtze River Turn deserves a special place in Chinese geography as this is where the mighty Yangtze River makes a 180 degrees turn from South- to North- bound ! The huge geographical and economical impact is that this first (of many thereafter) turns of The Yangtze eventually gives rise to the many great Chinese cities and civilisations along the East-bound Yangtze corridor of Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai !
Halong Bay, Sapa and Crossed Over To China
Posted On Sunday, April 1, 2007 at at 12:37 AM by AlvinHaving spent 2 days in rainy and dirty Hanoi (highly skippable in our opinion), we managed to pick a reliable agent (heads or tails, anyone ?) for a boat trip to visit Halong Bay which was calm and picturesque - a definite must-see. Hanoi was major scam country when it came to the arrangement of this particular trip, horror stories abound which we later found out to be well-documented in other travellers' blogs ! Anyway, commercial though everything was, it was well worth the trip which we happened to share with a group of Singaporeans. They were very nice to these jaded travellers (us) and shared with us their freshly caught seafood for dinner on the boat. It was a really pleasant 2 days we spent here !
When we arrived back to Hanoi, we took an overnight train to Sapa the same night. Worth mentioning, the ticket office of the Vietnam Train Authority was a direct leaf-out from the 60 Commi's era where they could hardly care less other than chatting amongst themselves and drinking tea, but somehow we still managed to buy a seated ticket off them, amazing ! The Milanese fellow and the Europeans in front of the queue had no such luck and they were waved away like annoying flies ! Poor guys.Now, we haven't told you yet about the thieves on the overnight train, have we ? Well, to say the least, luck was on our side as we by chance, held on to our bags (tightly) when we dozed off periodically during this overnight train ride; just as well, there were thieves aplenty; the grab-your-bag-and-jump-off-train variety. Also, it was a local train and there were many farmers on board and the cocks they had brought along kept calling sunrise throughout the night of this truly truly memorable train journey ! Hey we didn't want to take the "Tourist Class" comfy trains just to sample the "real" Vietnam, right ?
We based ourselves in the peaceful hill town of Sapa and visited some lovely and colorful local minority villagers such as The Cat Cat Village and the Bac Ha Sunday Market for the next few days.
It was such a memorable day to cross the border from Vietnam boarder town of Lao Cai (老街) to China at He Kou (河口) that we elected to stay an extra night at He Kou to slowly appreciate the experience before travelling on to Kunming - one of the best days during this Indo-China trip. Ace, Man !
