Travel

Itinerary Day 0. June 18. Tuesday. United Airlines flight departed San Francisco at 11:35pm. Day 1. June 20. Thursday. Arrived Dunhuang at night. Stayed at hotel Dunhuang Zhongzhou International Hotel ( 敦煌中洲国际酒店) Day 2. June 21. Friday. Mogao Caves. Watched the show Dunhuang Celebration ( 敦煌盛典) at night  Day 3. June 22. Saturday. Mingsha Mountain ( 鸣沙山) . Day 4. June 23. Sunday. Flew to Xi'an. Stayed at Sheraton Xi'an Hotel ( 西安喜来登大酒店 ).   Day 5. June 24. Monday. Visited Terracotta Warriors (兵马俑). Skipped the show Song of Everlasting Sorrow ( 长恨歌) because  Claire got a fever.  Day 6. June 25. Tuesday. Visited the museum Shanxi History Museum ( 陕西历史博物馆) and a mall. Day 7. June 26. Wednesday. Visited Yisushe (易俗社), a Qin Opera (秦腔) and shadow show (皮影戏) museum and theatre Day 8. June 27. Thursday. Flew to Lijiang. Watched the show Lijiang Eternal Love Scenic Area ( 丽江千古情). Stayed at Hampton by Hilton Lijiang Old Town ( 丽江古城希尔顿欢朋酒店) Day 9. June 28. Friday. Visited ...

Leaving Kunming  The hotel offered free airport shuttle. It required a reservation and ran at fixed time. We booked the 6:00am shuttle the day before. The shuttle picked us up and we went to the airport smoothly. Our flight departure was all smooth too.   Hong Kong We arrived Hong Kong at 10am. Our flight to San Francisco was 10pm, so we had plenty of time to explore. We got our luggage check-in luggage. Then I got some Hong Kong dollars from an ATM. I stored our luggage at a storage counter in the airport.  I bought two Octopus cards at the airport with 50 Hong Kong dollars each. These were transportation cards. We used the cards to take Airport Express to go to Hong Kong Central. We walked a bit and Claire got some snacks at a shop in the mall.  We then took the Star Ferry to go to Victoria Harbour, using our Octopus cards. We walked near the harbor. The skyline view was very pretty. It was really hot and humid. We ate some mango ice cream at a McDonald's...

We visited Shilin 石林, which means stone forest. I had booked a driver from Ctrip a few days before. Our driver in Lijiang was a smoker. Even though he did not smoke inside the car, I could still smell some.  So this time I specified that I wanted a non-smoker driver. The driver was a lady and she had a really nice BYD electric car. She said that for drivers, electric cars gave a higher profit margin.  I bought tickets at the park entrance. There were lots of guides for hire, but I did not feel like we needed them. I relied on the app Baidu Map to navigate inside the park and it worked well. The park had five areas and there were shuttles taking visitors to different areas.  Eternal Mushroom Most of the crowd went to the Large Stone Forest (大石林) area, so we went to Eternal Mushroom ( 万年灵芝 ) , an area that few people went. It was a beautiful hike with nobody else there. I totally enjoyed it.  Large Stone Forest From Eternal Mushroom, we took the shuttle to Large S...

We checked out of the hotel at 8am, which was before the free breakfast would be served. The hotel staff seamed some buns, packed them with some yogurt for us to eat on our way. It took me a long time to get a Didi ride. This surprisingly happened a lot during our time at the Yunnan province, in both Lijiang and Dali. We still managed to get to the train station on time. We took a bullet train to Kunming. I had booked the train tickets on Ctrip a few days prior. I timed my departure from the hotel so that I would arrive at the train station one hour before departure. That turned out to be more than plenty, 30 min would be enough. I first went to the ticket office. They told me that I did not need a ticket there, that I should be able to just use my passport to get in the terminal and get on the train. Indeed, we got in smoothly. The train was very nice.  We arrived Kunming in two hours. The only downside of taking a train vs. flying was that the train station in Kunming had st...

Today we went to a tie dye studio, 之凡之梵, in Dali Old Town. I found a promotion on the MeiTuan app. Claire and I chose to dye a T shirt and picked our design. A young lady there guided us how to do it. First we drew lines, next we use a needle put a thread along each line.   We then pull the threads and wrapped the crumbled part tight. I wanted a butterfly print. The lady used the templates to sandwich the T shirt, and used clamps to anchor the templates at the fixed position. We soaked the T shirts in water. The dye was some naturally fermented material. The lady mixed it first. We dropped in our T shirts and kept massaging it inside the dye. The lady was tracking the time. When the time was up, we took the T shirts out and washed it in running water. We repeated this step several times. The next step was tricky. We needed to cut loose certain threads. The lady did it for us. That released some white parts to be stained, i.e. the outer triangles in the next photo. We then...

After breakfast at the hotel, we took a Didi ride to the our next destination, Dali  大理 . We stayed at  Yanyuan Inn, a small hotel  next to the Erhai  洱海   lake. The full name on Ctrip for this hotel was Yanyuan Health Sea View Inn (Erhai Talent Village Branch, Dali) -  大理晏园·养生海景客栈(大理洱海才村店) . This hotel was my top 2 favorite in this trip, with the other being the hotel in Dunhuang. The service of this hotel was top notch. Three days prior, I bought a pair of car seat cushions from Taobao (Chinese equivalent of ebay) and contacted the hotel to get them shipped here. They really took care of it. When Claire wanted to have instant noodle that she bought, the kitchen staff gave us hot water and spoons and forks. They even offered to cook it for her and add some eggs to it, although Claire declined. On the last day when they knew that we wanted to leave before breakfast time, they heated up some dumplings and packed some yogurt in a box for us to eat.  The ...

The hotel that we stayed at,  Dali Geothermal Paradise ( 大理地热国),  had a hot springs water park. Entrance was free for hotel guests. It could also be accessed by a day pass. After breakfast, we went there. There were lots of different pools of hot springs, with tea, milk, roses etc. We soaked at each one of them for fun. Bei also joined us later. There were also indoor pools, which were good when it rained. One pool had seats with jets. I really enjoyed it. However, an hour later when we went back, it was closed for maintenance.  There was a water park, however, most of the facilities were closed for maintenance. Only a few baby slides were open, and the surfaces were not very smooth so you ended up sliding very slowly. Claire got bored quickly. We then went back to our room to soak in our private hot spring pool, and enjoyed food delivered to the room.

Eryuan 洱源 is a town between Lijiang  丽江 and Dali  大理, famous for hot springs .  Transportation snafu To get to Eryuan, my original plan was to call a Didi ride and it did not work out. The app showed a price of $50-60, but the driver asked for $10 private payment in addition. I declined out of principles. After two drivers did the same thing, Bei and I decided to take the bus instead. We got a Didi ride to the long-distance bus station, and bought our tickets. The lady checked our passports and issued tickets. It was 50RMB ($7) per person.  The driver loaded our luggage and we got on the bus. One staff member came on board to inspect that all passengers were wearing seatbelts and also had the driver taking a breathalyzer test. She then got off and the bus started.  Once we got off the bus, I got a Didi ride to our hotel Dali Geothermal Paradise ( 大理地热国). This hotel was huge, but did not have any signage to point to the front office. Our Didi driver just wan...