Lijiang

Women in traditional Naxi costumes dancing in the street.

Me, Carri & Dian in Lijiang.
More traditional architecture.
Lijiang at night.
Carri and Dian in Lijiang at night, with lots of touristy souvenir shops in the backgroud


We later learned that this building was built primarily for the tourists in 1997. It's still gorgeous though.

good bye china

I just went through passport control at hong kong (and found some free internet) I wish all airports had it. It still has not USB port, so no pictures still.

Yesterday saw me going on a day trip to Macau, which was quite interesting. It definitely has a bit of a las vegas feel to it, but without as much glitz (yet - there's a lot of construction going on). The single daytrip resulted in 5 passport stamps - one for leavnig HK, one for entering & leaving Macau & then two more on entering HK (they always give two).

Alas, I did not get a taylored suit while at HK, there wasn't enough time... but there's still hope, people say getting them made in thailand is even better :)

Now onto singapore for a couple of days

-sergei

HK

Ah Hong Kong, what a change... The city is hot, humid, modern, full of people and quite clean :) SOmetimes you forget this is technically part of China, but then realize that the blog is still blocked by the firewall, so no comment reading for me for another couple of days.

The one gripe I have about the city is that internet is incredibly difficult to find. I guess the point is that everyone has it at home, so they don't need internet cafes...on the other hand the hotels cator to business visitors & charge an arm and a leg for an horu of internet... So no pictures until I find a real internet cafe instead of kiosks scattered in coffee shops across the city.

Tiger leaping gorge was amazingly beautiful, although a bit wet :) It was cloudy, and raining on and off during our two day trek, but the real adventure came at the end.

Coming down to the last guesthouse we planned on getting a ride back to the starting point and then taking a bus back from there. However, the constant rain the night before cause a few landslides which completely blocked the road back. Not wanting to do the hike in reverse in one day, we found someone who drove us a few kilometers further down stream, to a sign that said "ferry 500m". About 2.5km (and 40 minutes) later we found the ferry stop, shouted across the river to wake up the ferry captain and soon made it into town on the opposite side.

The town people told us there was only one car in town and it had already gone to Lijiang, and wouldn't be back till 10pm. Not deterred we started walking around and saw a bus returning from Lijiang. After some quick negotiations we chartered it for the 4 of us (3 of us, plus a stanford business school student who we met on the way) all the way back to Lijiang, and made it home by 7.

Pictures are forthcoming, in the meantime, we are off to HK in a few hours. The adventure continues...

Took things easy today, visited a small local town of Baisha, and talked to the famous (thanks to a nytimes article 20 years ago) Dr Ho. Off for the tiger leaping gorge trek tomorrow.

We went to the great wall yesterday, going as far away from Beijing as possible to find the least touristy part of the wall. View from the valley below..


On the wall..

You can see it stretch for miles..

Now we made it to Lijiang, with a nice pedestrian old city. It's reminiscent of some small european towns..except for the pagodaesque architecture.

Our hotel:

In the land of Dragons

. After waking up early in the morning, to avoid the heat, the crowds & the traffic, we made it to the Forbidden city, where we were greeted by many dragons.



The whole complex is immense, and quite crowded, but we were able to find a few secluded spots.



We went to grab some lunch afterwards. The food here has been amazing, turns out I like Peking duck (though perhaps only in Peking :).

And what pray tell greeted me right after lunch? a reminder of work life.


We just booked a tour to the great wall for tomorrow. I'm excited!