Although the road between Kunming and Dali is nice 4-lane highway, the bus ride appeared longer than4 hours but still much shorter than going to Jinghong. In order to reach the Old city of Dali, we had to take a city bus for 25 minutes. As we got off the city bus, a number of touts were offering accommodation with photo albums as proof . One lady offered us a hotel room close by at a very appealing cost. After visiting the hotel and room, we accepted the offer. Our cheapest room to-date in China: $10 CDN/ night – a nice room except that it did not have any internet connectivity.

After spending a bit of time walking around in the Old City of Dali, we quickly felt at ease with the town. We discovered a great local restaurant with good Western and Chinese food. We enjoyed it so much that we had all our meals at “Café de Jack”. With it may water stream along is walkways, the town offered many photo opportunities.

The next day, somehow I convinced Jenny to rent once again some bicycles to discover more local scenery along lake Erhai Hu. Although, the first 6-9 kms were great, we encountered some muddy road construction for next 4-6 kms. While attempting to locate a ferry boat that could bring us back to Dali, we bicycled along small roads in tiny fishing villages. We learned that the ferry boat had stopped operating a year or two ago!!! We bicycled back to a pier close to Dali where we embarked on a three hours boat ride on the large lake. When we were returned our rented bikes, the store ladies pointed out that we had taken a lot of sun. To our surprise, we caught a sun burn even with the heavy cloud cover. I’m now being called the Lobster by Jenny and Victoria.

In the evening, we had a large supper, including a mix of Western and Chinese food, at our favorite restaurant and we later took plenty of pictures in the Old City.