Thursday 09.08.2012
This morning we woke up in a authentic old courtyard hotel in the middle of the old town (Dayan) of Lijiang. A criss cross pattern of narrow streets and small canals, as we already experienced during our arrival in the night. Since we arrived quite late we took it slow this day. First a long, good breakfast and then slowly strolling around the town, a Unesco World Heritage site: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/811/
As time went by more and more people (mainly Chinese tourists) filled the streets walking around, like we did, passing all the small shops and small restaurants. Again the pictures will tell you the story of this little town, or like we said, the “Volendam of China” (for our non Dutch friends: Volendam is a very touristy small town in The Netherlands). More info about Lijiang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_of_Lijiang
In the evening we had a typical local dinner, a Naxi (the name of the local tribe) Beef Hotpot. A big bowl of boiling broth with beef and vegetables, quite tasty. Then after a coffee we walked back to our hotel. Tomorrow we will be travelling again (two domestic flights). Oh, and in case you were wondering about us being photographed by the Chinese ..... well, again quite a few times.
Friday 10.08.2012
Not much to write about other than that our first flight had a delay of 2 hours (it is only a 45 minute flight) and because of that we missed our connecting flight to Guilin. We had to wait for another 6 hours on the airport, on standby for the last flight of that day to Guilin, hoping there would at least be 2 cancellations. If not, we had to wait in Kunming for 2 days. Luckily, they found 2 seats for us and late that night, after 2 am, we finally arrived at our hotel in Yangshuo.