Day 78 - Shangri-la, Lijiang

08.10.09

Off to Lijiang on the 1pm bus and we spend a good amount of time trying to work out whether Ilya can fit his bike on board or not. It doesn't look like it will fit, and in the end, we leave it behind as a gift for the staff at the bus station. The journey doesn't take too long and we pull into Lijiang about 5 hours or so later, 'only' suffering one burst tyre on the way, which our driver doesn't know how to change, so end up waiting for another driver to come along and help him fix it. It's quite ridiculous when you think about it, in the past 2 weeks, I have suffered 3 burst tyres on bus journeys, I don't think I've ever had one on a bus journey before.

Once in lijiang we get a taxi to the road to our entrance at the old town (It's all pedestrianised), apparently the old town is like a labyrinth to navigate and so a taxi to the nearest point is the only way. Luckily our hostel is about 50m from where we get out and it is all remarkably easy. In our room we also share with a Chinese man from Shangdong called Chen Feng who seems very quiet, but then if you can't speak English and we are all speaking it, then I can understand why. I tell him that we are going for some food and does he know anywhere good, at which point he dons his coat and takes us to a nearby place where we have a wonderful noodle/spicy/broth concoction. He then takes us on a tour of the old town of Lijiang, which is huge and beautiful. It has a strange vibe about it as it's very tourist orientated in places, but still retains a beautiful charm. We all go for beers in the evening, which I shout for as it's kind of like a celebratory job drinks. It's weird being the main point of communication between Michel and Ilya and Chen, but I am the one with the best grasp of the language, my aim when I get back home to the UK is to keep it up and keep learning. It's a great language to speak and is quite fun to learn.