Lijian, Tiger Leaping Gorges, Dali > 3rd month

I left the Sichuan province for the beautiful but very touristy Yunnan province.

First stop :

LIJIANG

Welcome to Lijiang, another Chinese city with a huge statue of Mao.

But what's this city is famous for is its lay back Old city and nice parks.

The black dragon pool

On May 20th, I celebrated my birthday in a Chinese club.

Really cool memories : Canadian guys making up karaoke songs and getting the crowd to sing along. Hot hip hop track at midnight for my birthday. An entire club singing happy birthday to me!

here is the funniest birthday present I got this year! > a pair of glove-sock from Ryo, a cool Japanese traveler.

Lijiang was also the departing point for the... \

TIGER LEAPING GORGE

A 2 or 3 day-trek in dangerous Chinese gorges! You really need to watch out for the landslides and sleepery stones.

It took out like 12 hour walk to go down to the river side.

I thought I'd be a piece of cake compared to the Trek in Nepal but it really wasn't. It was crazy difficult going down .

Going down then up was a real adventure. We had to climb an endless amont of stonestep, ladders, take ropeways and finally climb up a huge landslides.

Spent two days with a nice German couple, Sebastian und Effa.

Effa is writing her final paper on journalism freedom and Beijing while Sebastian worked for Siemens in Shanghai for three months.

AROUND LIJIANG

Went for a bike ride through the countryside around Lijiang.

Meet a few genuine people from the Naxi minority. This is not like the tourist-orientex Naxi show you get in town .

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This is the other face of China, far from skyscrapers and Carrefour supermarkets.

DALI

Another peaceful town with a nice old quartier, surrounded by gates like this.

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A few pictures from the Dali market. Great place to meet people in their everyday life.

Who is cutter? The kid or the bunny?

I'm now chilling in Kunming in a wonderful laidback guest house. Next stop : Yangshuo