Day 8. To Lijiang

We flew to Lijiang in the morning. Lijiang is a town in the Yunnan province. The weather here was very comfortable ~20C in the summer. June-August was the raining season here. While it rained quite often, it was just some drizzle for a short time, so it was not bad for traveling. 

Hotel

We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel, Hampton by Hilton Lijiang Old Town (丽江古城希尔顿欢朋酒店). I chose this hotel because it was outside of the old town and very quiet. The staff was super nice. When the front desk lady saw that we were curious about the delivery robot, she offered to send the robot to our room by putting two bottles of water in the robot and programmed it to go to our room. We had fun following the robot. The included breakfast buffet was nice too. They had local specialties such as flower cakes.

A couple of downsides of this hotel. The hotel was supposed to be non-smoke building. However, we had smoke smell coming from the vent on two days around breakfast time, most likely because someone was smoking in their room. When I complained to front desk, they upgraded our room to a suite, which was at the end of the hall, so there was no longer smoke. The other downside is that there is no drawer in the room. There was shelf space, but not a single drawer, so all our things were either laid out in the open or had to be in our luggage.

Lunch

We had lunch at a restaurant near the hotel. Raining season means mushroom season. The restaurant had a prominent display of the their wild mushroom of the day. I ordered mushroom fried rice and Claire got spaghetti. We both enjoyed our food.

Lijiang Eternal Love

After lunch, I got a Didi ride to the Lijiang Eternal Love Scenic Area. I had previously booked two tickets from Ctrip. It was a theme park, with shows and parades. Since the entrance ticket was only $40 per person, so it was a good place to spend an afternoon. 

Not included in the tickets were food and other services. It was not that expensive, so we ate quite some snacks too, yak yogurt, corn on a cob etc. Claire even got an ear cleaning service, where they put a thin scoop into your ears to clean the ear wax. The ear cleaning service stand first offered to give a free examination on your ears using a probe camera. I told them that "my ears are filled with ear wax and I am virtually deaf, but I am still not buying your service". I was not enthusiastic about the service, thinking that it was not cheap ($25) and dubious on safety. However, Claire really wanted it, so I let her have it. Later she said that it was a unique feeling and worth trying it, but she would not do it again.