We went out for a bike ride with one of the Chinese girls’ Sylvia who was staying in the dorm with us, she was friends with another of the girls working at the hostel. It was good to have her with us as she could help us to find our way by asking the locals which way to such and such a place. She wanted to go to a specific village called Xixhou which is about 20km away from Dali old town. We wanted to cycle through some of the villages closer to the lake so we could explore the farmland, the most direct way would be to cycle along the high way for the entire ride but that’s no fun, so we compromised and spent some time cycling to the villages and some time catching up and taking the highway to the furthest place.

The farmland in Dali is very lush and extremely beautiful to photography. During our stay in Dali the sky was a perfect blue and it was a very comfortable temperature indeed, only being cold in the shade. By night it dropped significantly but we had electric blankets to cope with this!

So we took in the scenery around us, some farmland, some lake and some road. It was stunning. We got to Xixhou at around 3pm and ambled through the village market before stopping for some very good value soup rice noodles. For 3 of us to eat it cost around £2.80, and the food tasted really good. The only bad thing was a local guy pestering us for left over food and drink, he wouldn’t leave us alone and eventually got what he wanted. Still the setting took us away from this. We continued out of the village and took the road to some older parts of the area. Once more fantastic views, terraces and buildings surrounded us.

We decided to make our way back at around 4pm and set off for Dali. We were going quicker than Sylvia on her lady-like bike so we waited for her every so often, plus the drivers on the road aren’t the most reliable often overtaking two cars in one go so we wanted to make sure we were all with us. When we got back Sylvia joked about how fit we were compared to her and she said she’d only ever ridden a bike once before in her life. Considering this fact she did very well indeed.

When we got back we ate at an Indian restaurant down the road from our hostel and enjoyed more chai. Back at the hostel there were a few more travelers, Helen got chatting to Jane who she’d seen at various other places around China. It’s very easy to bump into people when you use Hostelworld for recommendations on where to stay. Many people also choose to travel through South China from Vietnam as it’s a good route and the weather is pretty good in Yunnan.

So it was our last night in Dali and we really loved the town and the hostel had a nice vibe too. We decided to nip back to Bakery 88 the next morning to get some take-away sandwiches with very good cheese and meat! Yum!! We also sneaked in a few more granola slices.

The bus back took the scenic route as part of the highway was closed but this wasn’t a bad thing as it meant we got to drive through some more beautiful countryside and villages. It was quite a luxury bus with only a few of us on board, and we got back to Cloudland at around 7pm. We had some food, chatted away and got ready for our flight to Guangzhou the following day.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

We woke up to people using the washing areas, kitchen noise and the constant sound of rain. We were pretty relieved to know that we were moving upstairs to a quitter part of the guesthouse and it was also really comforting starting the day off with a good bowl of porridge. The rain was set for the day so we had to think about what we wanted to do that wouldn’t involved us getting absolutely soaked all day. Simon had a few ideas so we went along with those.

The first part of the day saw us walk up to the local fish market – around a fifth of the size of the one in Tokyo but it showcased it’s local famous crab – some of which had been freshly caught that day and were still clapping their claws together, others had been caught over a year ago and were seen as more of a delicacy. We were shocked to see that some crabs were on sale for up to 40,000 yen – somewhere around £300!!

After our little market experience we walked through the Kanazawa Castle grounds empty of tourists in the rain but you could still appreciated this beautiful site completed only in 2001 so it was very white and clean. Coming out of the grounds led us to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, a very minimal low to the ground glass-structured building. As we approached the gallery so did a bus load of school children, you really can’t avoid the school groups at any major tourist or art attraction over here. In the foyer they all lined up and listened intently to their teacher’s instructions, so we aimed to get a bit of a head start on the groups and darted into the gallery. The first group exhibition titled “Invisible reality” hosted works by Mona Hatoum, Anish Kapoor and Vik Muniz. Works by Muniz combined were a large collection of photographic prints showing injected bubble marks forming a pattern from re-constructed star-maps using NASA software. Each piece was a re-creation of the night sky-maps during key moments in time such as the fall of the Berlin wall. This was a pretty impressive piece of work.

The main exhibition was a collection of works by performance artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, think Honda car advertising and people dressed as a bear and a panda exploring Japan and other parts of the world. Quite humorous at times but also a little strange.

It was still raining when we left but had decided we would go to the local tourist exchange salon down town where they were holding classes in local craft. The craft we would learn was to make flowers out of fabric along with several other local ladies who were impressed and intrigued as to how we found out about the class. Namaste have a sheet that advertises what’s happening at the exchange salon so it was pretty easy for us to find. It was a really fun experience if a little surreal and we all walked out with a couple of bunches of flowers made from fabric and wire. Very cute, Dave was particularly good at this and showed off every little flower he made to a warm reception of cooing middle aged Japanese ladies impressed with his skill. ha ha!

Our next skill learning task was to go to a guitar shop and learn to play the shamisen a traditional Japanese instrument mostly played by Geisha. The family who run the workshop have been making this instrument for over a hundred years. We were led upstairs, had a powdered green tea and sweet and were instructed that we would be teaching ourselves. The video footage will describe the sound these instruments create. Helen was jamming out at various stages whilst Simon and Dave focused intently on get the correct notes. It was really funny and got us out of the rain for a short while. This was our last port of call before heading back via the packs eagles circling above a bridge over the river.

Later on we called Dave’s parents on Skype, bought discounted sushi from the supermarkets and planned a wee trip out for Dave’s birthday!! One more sleep to 27!!

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)