Dali to Kunming--The Real and The Surreal

3 August 2009

On to Dali, a grey-and-white city of Yunnan. The buildings are all chalky pale, with painted panels of animals, landscapes, and random other stuff along the middle of each, done in muted tones of black and charcoal. Apparently Dali is presented as competition for Lijiang, and to be fair, some of our party preferred it. Personally, I'll take the OTT Lijiang any day—touristy yes, but also hysterically entertaining. In Dali, we were given the usual distracted and disjointed tour by Vanessa (whose virtues as a guide do not extend to knowing where anything is, marking up maps correctly, or taking a straight route to anyplace). Foreigner Street is in the vein of Lijiang, with the addition of some really nice batik—the city is known for it. Pizza, beer, etc. also on offer, as well as ganja proffered by various very old ladies (to the boys, at least).

Shopped a bit, and David and I had supper at a Korean/Chinese tourist bar, on a wooden balcony overlooking a few dozen local ladies dancing precariously close to a bonfire with assorted tourists. Bought a batik headscarf (useful for hiding the greasy hair resultant from days of bushcamping), and an embroidered belt...David bought a cigarette case with the Communist leaders all marked out for easy reference. Louise and Denis got Mao caps, complete with red stars. Offensive? Culturally insensitive? Who knows...China is a strange place.

Left Dali for a half day's drive to Kunming, the last metropolis of China in Yunnan. Bushcamping for a few days coming up—Kunming is a fairly laid back city, with reasonable shopping and all, but nowhere near as interesting as the other places we've been in the last 5 weeks. Did find an actual Clinique boutique, and spent about 3 days budget on lovely face wash—but surely that's forgivable? Also got plain old skin cream—dare you to find one that's neither whitening nor containing snake oil. China is lovely for some things, but christ, how hard is it to make ONE skin lotion that doesn't promise to bleach skin? Or have snake bits in it? Kunming boasts a Wal-Mart and a Carrefour, both of which made the teensiest bit homesick for western food—and for labels I can read. I miss Cyrillic—at least I had a chance there.

Hotel is decent, but no wifi, and no AC either. Bit hot. Have done laundry, got supplies, eaten McDonald's (sooooo good after all this time—no McWesternCrap since Tblisi), and seen pagodas. Dinner at a place called the Prague Cafe, complete with wifi and really very nice Japanese food.

Currently watching CCTV 9, or Propaganda TV. This is the Chinese international channel, presented in English, and consists mainly of the business news and documentaries on things like the poplar trees of the Gobi desert. The news is just a leetle-bit biased toward the government, you might say. For example, the Iranian plane crash a few weeks ago? Mainly the US's fault for having sanctions on Iran. The Uighur rebellion last month has been denounced by the leader's family—they're very sad that the Harmony and Unity of Ethnic Groups in China have been damaged by her. Argh.