Dali

This sleeper train ride, we were in the 2nd car, which meant that every time the whistle blowed (every 5-10 seconds. I counted.) it blew right in through the open windows that were doing nothing to cool off the top bunk, where I was, anyway.

At least the Dali hotel was charming. It was set up in a collection of building pods each with their own little garden area courtyard, connected by more garden area pathways.

Before we were allowed to check in though, we had class at the 3 pagodas and temple complex.

 I trekked up all the way to the very last building, which was pretty equivalent to climbing a mountain. The buildings are all built in a line, so every time I thought I'd reached the last one, I'd just discover one more after it. The actual last building was a tower which, once I staggered up the stairs, offered a nice view of the town and the lake, which was glittering warmly in the morning light when we arrived, but as it took me 9 thousand years to get to the tower, was no longer looking pretty for my photo.

Dali has a place called Foreigner Street, which once was the street that all the backpacking foreigners liked to stay at since it was "off the beaten track." Then the Chinese started figuring out that that's where all the foreigners were at, and then Asian toursits started coming to Dali to look at non-Asian tourists, which is all kinds of ridiculous, and ended up turning Foreigner St. into one big tourist spot.

You'd think that'd mean we'd fit in here, but the strip was oddly devoid of foreigners except ourselves that day. We spent the few free hours of our afternoon sitting on the outside benches of a bar playing cards, which was very Chinese of us. Chinese tour guides taking their groups down the street would stop next to us and clearly use us as an example in their speeches. We also started blatantly posing for photos when we caught the shy ones trying to sneak them (the not shy ones would make us pose with them).

One of the girls found a spa in the hotel complex, and convinced myself and another to try this Chinese cupping massage technique thing. I had not heard of it, and in hindsight, probably should have inquired about it more before agreeing. Basically, they have a bunch of round jars, which they briefly heat up with a lighter before sticking on your back. The heat creates suction that sucks up your skin into a sort of ball shape in the jar, which they leave on for about 10 minutes. I felt like a stagasaurus. Then when they take the jars off, you get some really attractive polka dots, which also hurt.