Up at 6am today as we were both feeling jet-lagged, making ourselves stay in bed as long as we could having woken up on the hour since about 3am. The early wake up was good though as it meant we could get to the Venice beach Farmers Market for opening at 7.30am. It’s a small market, much smaller than its neighbouring Santa Monica one but it’s got enough to offer in terms of fresh produce, which for us is ideal as we’re self catering.

So we tentatively spent our first dollars and bought a very delicious assortment of cherry tomatoes, some leafy greens and homemade dill bagels with a lovely whipped cream cheese! That’s lunch sorted for the next few days!

When we got in we enjoyed our first breakfast here which was helped by Matt’s generous offering of endless supplies of mangoes, strawberries and blueberries! This fueled us enough for a walk to the Santa Monica Pier along the beach front. It’s about 2 miles to the pier from Venice beach and there are paths for cyclists and pedestrians all the way along the stretch of the beach and beyond. It’s really set up for the fitness fanatics. Getting closer to the pier we watched surfers, and people setting up their spots on the beach for the day. We explored the pier and then made our way back to Venice.

Later on we explored the Venice Canals, a place we think we will frequent with our cameras, it’s really beautiful and very close to where we’re staying. It’s just good to stroll around and take in the contrast of houses from quaint, old beach style homes to modern grand designs. We ended our afternoon on the beach – we had arrived!

Helen started her course in the evening with Erich Schiffman so no doubt will be very yoga focused in the next 10 days, but Venice does have this boho vibe going on so we don’t think she’ll be too out of place!

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f/2.0, Leica 90mm f/2.8, Zeiss 18mm f/4 ZM & Olympus PEN EP-1, 17mm f/2.8 & 100mm f/2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

Up early we made our own breakfast in the room and headed out to find some half decent bikes for a good price. We tried a few places that were mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, however the bikes were knackered and wouldn’t have got us down the road let alone into the unknown terrain ahead. We finally found some bikes that were the best we had seen, and these were nothing special, at least they had brakes and what looked to be gears on one of them. We began our journey following the LP and a photocopied map that the bike rental cafe gave us. It was straight forward enough, straight down the road for 18km.

It all started off well and level, but soon we were faced with huge big dipping roads, up hill, down hill, up hill, down hill. The midday sun was rapidly approaching and the map we had did not show as far as the river that we were heading towards. Water was also running low as well as the bikes felling very tired and the chains were very rusty! We finally passed a billboard sign with a photograph of a waterfall and not much else, we proceeded as it did not look like a path that would lead us to the waterfall, the sign looked like an advert for the area. Down a huge hill, which was fun and to the bottom, success the river was there and the waterfall must be nearby. Asking the locals they said it was a few KM up the road from where we came. This was not good news and we decided to grab water and food here and try to get a boat to the waterfall.

The people are very friendly and they cooked us up a meal with our requirements of no meat. They showed us the meat and fish that they had and you would have to be a brave person to try it, cooked and uncooked meat in torn plastic bags together in a basket and dried fish that did not look very tasty. We had rice with eggs and a bowl of vegetables which was lovely and they brought us more rice however we were stuffed to the brim. We inquired about a boat to the waterfall $20. We asked about a truck taxi back with our bikes but that was $20. Due to it been New Year they were all having fun and relaxing, we weren’t going to hold it against them for charging high rates. We decided to brave the roads once more and started our assent up the hill.

The ride back was surprisingly enjoyable and we got back to Koh Kong in no time. Chill time and showers and then out for some food, where we had a great Thai curry and decent Pad-thai. Many locals were celebrating TET so we witnessed family gatherings, massive spit roast pigs waiting to be feasted upon and firecrackers were going off all over the place. For the remainder of the evening we sat at one of the sea-view bars and got the blog up to date.

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

We had breakfast at the hotel in the form of muesli and fruit before going off on bikes for the day. At Bamboo they have a good choice of mountain and city bikes (we opted for mountain bikes of course) perhaps some of the best bikes we’ve used on our travels so far!

We had a map with some good trails outlined and so off we went in the hopes of finding some less tourist-driven villages. Finding the right path is okay to start with as you head out of Yangshou town via the back roads and then there is a path that cuts under the bridge and from here you get to a gravel road, which is pretty tricky to ride over, although much more manageable if you have a decent mountain bike – you often see people on tandems and city bikes on this kind of terrain!! From here you go towards smaller paths which take you through farmland and villages, you just head north up the Li River towards Moon Hill, its a long journey on bikes and we often found ourselves the only people on the roads and thinking we may be on the wrong path.

After a brief stop for satsumas and snacks we went on our way to Moon Hill. When we arrived there were many tourists who were either enjoying the views, shopping, eating or planning to take a trip up the hill. It was getting close to 4pm by this time and we’d been cycling for the past 4 hours so decided not to climb the hill. But we did stop for some fresh corn and a few photos of the random tourist attractions such as a monkey dressed in an Asian suit posing along side happy holiday makers at what cost we didn’t stop to find out.

It only took about another 45 minutes or so to get back into Yangshou mostly on the high way which was in no way as satisfying as going through all the villages and countryside. When we got back we opted for a spot of Chinese food at another Lonely Planet recommendation Kelly’s. The food was fairly good and we weren’t charged too much for it either. Afterwards we went o Monkey Jane’s for a few drinks just to get familiar with the place before the big bash the following night. They also do really cheap beer!! We met a group of travellers who invited us to play cards with them…8 games of Shithead later and we were ready to call it a night. We had a good link with one of the guys as he’d been traveling with someone we’d met in Dali, I picked up on his Irish accent after Jane had said we may bump into them. Small world this traveling lark!

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

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)