Once I landed in Kunming, I caught a cab to take me to the bus station. The city of Kunming is surrounded by mountains and the city itself was flooded with apartments being built and industries pumping out smoke. One of the smoke stakes even had straight up yellow smoke coming out of it, that can't be good for the environment!
Once I got to the bus station, all these locals came up to me offering a cheap ride to Dali; seemed pretty sketchy, that's probably a way that a kidney or two disappear. So, I bought a bus ticket for a 5 hour ride to Dali. I was a little concerned about whether or not I was actually going to Dali because there was a huge language barrier.
Didn't really have my eyes on the windows, I used this time to catch up on some reading. When I was looking out the window, we were surrounded by mountains under a dark cloudy sky. About halfway through, we stopped at a rest stop to grab some food and rest. I grab a stick of cooked potato slices covered in spices, pretty good.
Once we got close to Dali, the sky was really weird. The mountains on either side of me trapped in the dark sky with the clouds' help; however, off in the distance, the sun was setting. So where I was, it was pitch black dark, yet the sky was bright in the vast distance. It was an amazing combination of weird and cool.
The bus stopped in the new town of Dali, where there is large buildings covered in LED lights. I knew that this couldn't be the place I was ment to be. My friend, Joseph, was waiting for me in the Old Town, so I had to figure out how to get there. With a huge language barrier and a sheet of paper with Mandarin directions on it, I asked around and got onto another bus to take me to where I needed to go. The bus was small and filled with a handful of people, yet it quickly filled up and had many people standing up shoulder to shoulder.
Once I got to the Old Town, I had no idea of where to go. I asked some guy where the address was on the sheet of paper and he pointed me in the right direction. As I was walking, I noticed the old man was following me. He is either trying to help and wants a tip or I am about to get jumped. He continually pointed me in the same direction as I gestured for him to go away. I asked a police officer for a better set of directions. He took me to the road where the hostel was supposed to be. I left him and the old man and headed down the road. I must have paced up and down that road 10 times with people at one end pointing me to go to the other end and vice versa. No hostel to be found.
On the edge of the road was this temple thing with shops in the center. Luckily, one of them was still open and the lady spoke pretty good English. She took me in and called the hostel, and someone from the hostel came and escorted me back to the place. What a relief!
When i got to the hostel, it was great to see a firmiliar face. To think that I haven't seen him since our last encounter outside of a bar in Da Lat, Vietnam; at the time, I never thought traveling in China together. After I got settled into the dorm, we headed out with some Chinese guys who were volunteering at the hostel. We ducked into a bar called the Bad Monkey and we got a tower of beer and a pipe of shisha for the group. Eventually, Joseph brought out a deck of card and we played some drinking games through the night.
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