Ok yes, I am not on time this round. I missed out to post right at 8pm, in fact, I am writing this in real-time. It's 8.40pm, Friday 5th December and I just got home from work about an hour ago. I meant to write about my Yunnan trip but you guys...the thought of writing a very long post just exhaust me. I drafted something on my phone but it was non-coherent, just bits and pieces here and there. I don't know whether to make it informative or day to day breakdown or a reflection. In short, I was overwhelmed.
Hence why I procrastinated it until today, and I've decided, this post is going to be everything -- a bit informative, a bit of travelog and a bit of my reflection from the trip. You have to bear with me if it's end up going to be long. Here goes nothing.
This trip was planned so early, we (my three colleagues and I) booked the tickets kind of on a whim, back in May or June. We paid a hefty amount for the tickets, so please don't do that and wait for better timing to buy them. Compare prices with people who have gone, get know how low it can go. We decided to go right after 11.11 Sale, the best possible date was 14 - 25 November. We only started really planning for the trip in late September to October -- figuring out the itinerary, booking packages and allocating how many days do we want to stay at each city.
On the day we leave, we were all working full day, still. It was a Friday and our flight was at 10pm, so might as well work the day normally. We took red-eye flight, which was not the best decision at the time because as we landed, it was 2am and nothing opens, we could not check in because our first hotel was in Dali and we landed in Kunming, our train to Dali was not until 7am. So we ended up hanging out at the airport, tired, hungry, sleepy and exhausted. We were also irritated with the amount of times we had to reject taxi drivers for offering rides repeatedly.
When it was time to go, we freshen up and took Didi (e-hailing in China, just like Grab) to Kunming train station. As soon as we sat on the train, we all crashed. Within minutes all of us fell dead asleep, only woke up like 15 minutes before arriving in Dali. It was a goooooood nap to say the least. We needed it. Arrived in Dali, we took another Didi to our hotel. It was a cute guest house overlooking Erhai Lake that I immediately fell in love with. The whole area was so quaint and lovely. It truly made me feel like I was in a K-drama -- it was the kind of picturesque view that you only see on TV.
In Dali, because we only stayed for one night, we didn't get to do much except for exploring Erhai Lake, both around our hotel and a park at the other side of the lake that took us one hour drive to get to. Even though the stay at Dali was short, but I think it was what we needed -- a slow paced, quite city -- perfect as the first city we visit.
Next city was Lijiang. If anyone visits Yunnan, Lijiang will be the main agenda. Both main attractions for Yunnan are here in Lijiang. So like everybody else, we did the same. First day in Lijiang was spent strolling around the ancient city. Every cities has their own ancient city that you must visit. They are all very quaint and unique in their own way. Lijiang's ancient city is very busy. Packed with people every night. Because our hotel in Lijiang was right in the middle of the ancient city, we naturally go out strolling around every night we were there, eating ice cream in 10°C. Immaculate vibes all around. I loved Lijiang.
The next day was our trip up to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (JDSM), Blue Moon Valley and we also watched Lijiang Impression Show. All these were in the same park area. This is the only thing we took a package for, all other things we did DIY. People would ask me how did we communicate with the locals -- it was fully via google translate guys. We could not speak an ounce of Mandarin, they can't speak or understand any English, so google translate was all we relied on. They also knew that they have to translate to English so often they were ready with their own translate app. We were among the first trip to go up the JDSM that day, it was only around 7.30AM when we got up there, the view was insanely breathtaking but I could not for the life of me stand how cold it was up there. The temperature was -5°C, the coldest my human body has ever experienced, but thankfully all of us felt okay going up that high. around 3000+m above sea level.
Blue Moon Valley was nothing too special, the valley itself was a-okay only but because it was also overlooking the snow mountain, the pictures you take have insane backdrop. Then Lijiang Impression Show was nice. The view that you get, overlooking the snow mountain was the main event itself. It was like a feast to the eyes. I cannot repeat this enough but it was gorgeous. The show was obviously in full Mandarin, I don't understand half of it, except for parts that translation were provided. Essentially it tells about the origin story of the ethnic groups of Lijiang. It was interesting.
The next day we went to Tiger Leaping Gorge, fully DIY. This trip took a whole day too, only because the trip to TLG took 2 hours by bus, one way. So two hours going there and two more hours back to Lijiang. Truthfully, the place was not super fascinating. Maybe I was not into it as much, it it's water. However, I must say, the view along the journey was what made it worth it. Stunning all the way.
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