Experiences

Email From Paul In Ruilli

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

Before we left Chongquing Jana and I got an email from Paul, one of the Ruili kids. Jana and I were both very touched that these kids considered spending time with us so special that one of them even forgot about his own birthday! How many 17 year olds at home would spend an evening with two older women? When we were leaving Ruili, Paul had said to Jana that Chinese people feel sad at parting. When Jana said that we do too, but in so short a time we have become friends, Paul responded by saying, No, it does not take a long time. The email is best read in Paul’s own words:

Eunice, Jana:

howtimefly
I feel very happy, because
i can receive your email! i have told my parents message about you! They feel very move! i know, you are old, however, you are healthy, but you don’t afraid difficulty, from the U S A to China! Do this need nerve!
My mother is 43, i know women’s age is a secret, but she does not mind! she want to travel, my father agree her, but she said to me: i’m afraid.’
This is a chinese’s word about travel.
Why the USA is a developed country, but China is a developing country! problem in there, thinking!
Now is 23:27, my mother asks me to do homework, i
must go now!
Finally, i hope i can see you again, i represent duan na, fantasy, stv thank you again, thank you give us so wonderful time!

yours: paul
good luck to you!

Panda Research Base

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

An early morning one-hour ride on Sam’s Guesthouse bus took us south of Chengdu to the Panda Research Base where China is trying to keep the Giant Pandas from disappearing into extinction. It was fun, even though the air was freezing, to watch the adolescents play…tumbling…climbing…scrapping with each other. It was interesting to watch these toy-like herbivores sit up on their haunches selecting and eating the leaves given them by the park attendents. But the newborns in the nursery window absolutely stole your heart away…delighted chattering Japanese children watching the babies adding to the magic.

You can see the pandas two thirds of the way through one of my China’s videos here.

Perspective On China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

China is big.

The population is staggering with a billion and a half people. It’s a matter of getting perspective. Our home state of Oregon only has about 1.5 million people. By comparison Hong Kong has 7 million. Westerners hear mainly about the Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but Guangzhou, the first mainland city we visited two hours north of Hong Kong is a westernized city of commerce with nearly 7 million people…it’s province of Guangdong having 46 million. Kunming, which reminds us of Denver Colorado…a mile high, cold but sunny…has nearly 4 million people but its located in rural province of Yunnan that has nearly 44 million people.

Guilin has nearly 1.4 million people…it�s province of Guangxi having nearly 75 million. Yangshuo, an hour south of Guilin, felt like a small village in comparison with the bigger cities but the guidebook shows it with a population of 300,000…bigger than our home town of Salem, Oregon.

Chengdu has over 11 million people but it’s province, Sichuan, has 109 million. Chongqing, the city where we started our Chang Jiang (Yangze) River trip, is a sophisticated lively city that reminds us of San Francisco with 5.8 million people…it�s province having 32.5 million. You get the idea–lots of Chinese folks—and lots more on the way even with their one child policy. Ultimately a formidable group.

How is China Doing?
As near as we can tell, China’s cities and it�s citizens are doing well. The significant story is in the poorer rural areas where only 10% of China’s land mass is capable of agriculture…encouraging genetic engineering of food to force an increase in production and where unemployment and disastisfaction is high…and where China’s leadership will continue to be challenged by demonstrations that are never reported in the Chinese or Western press.

The arguments against the Yangze River dam pale in comparison to the country’s need for electricity…and in comparison to the economic power China will become because of it. Mao Tse Tung decreed nine categories of enemy: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, foreign agents, capitalist-roaders and…The Stinking Ninth…intellectuals. The motto then was “Serve The People.” “To Be Rich Is Glorious” is the motto used now by a new practical generation…the first to grow up with no spirituality, no Confucius and no interest in politics…unhampered by religion and it’s dogmas-Taoism, Buddhism and even Christianity-unhampered by emperors, by chairmen, by gods.

China’s youth wants democracy and freedom. But the Chinese “never know when to stop,” says Paul Theroux who recounted his trip through China by train in the 80’s in his “Riding The Iron Rooster.” Where will the brakes come from when China is headed toward excess…in a China already plagued by corruption?

When I asked one of the teenagers in Ruili if he could go to Hong Kong if he wanted to answered “No Money…No Happy!” Another, Paul, a teenager who plays the guitar in his rock band, when asked what he thought about Hong Kong, answered: “Paradise!” You Western capitalist running dogs…look out for the younger generation in Communist China…the generation that is so excited that they are finally free to work hard…free to put money in their pocket…already making materialism in the West look ascetic.

I would love to have a conversation with Ma Jian, the poet, painter and writer who, being harassed by communist cadres, left Beijing in the early 80’s and traveled through China for three years. In his book “Red Dust” Ma foreshadowed the thinking of the next generation when he recounted his thoughts after getting lost and nearly dying in a desert: Walking through the wilds freed me from “worries and fears, but this is not real freedom. You need money to be free.”

When, after a student demonstration in the 80’s in Guangzhou, Paul Theroux asked Andrew, a university student, if he expected to become a capitalist-roader, Andrew answered “I think we have a lot to learn. We want to use the good features of capitalism but not the bad ones.” “Is that possible? Paul asked. “We can try” Andrew answered. Maybe it is only fair that now China gets it’s turn to try…

Ruili China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

Coming down out of the mountains we were happy to see Ruili lying in the green lush valley below…a larger city than I thought…a Chinese/Burma border town with a mix of Han Chinese, minorities and Burmese traders hawking jade and various smoking substances. The streets were not all marked in Pinyin…the communist-designed phonetic romanization of the spelling of Chinese characters…and we spent half the afternoon looking for a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook before we finally registered at a hotel owned by the Chinese water and electric company, Li Shui, meaning Sweet Water.

That night we found a Burmese street restaurant and ordered five dishes and an alcoholic cherry drink all for a little over two dollars. Back at the hotel, we fell into bed exhausted…but were furiously wakened at various intervals during the night…by prostitutes hoping to find male foreigners!

December 26
The next day after eating breakfast noodles in the market we walked down an ancient cobblestone road to the old part of Riuli called Mengmao where a lovely old man fell into step with us along the way. He took us first to see the elaborate carving of the concrete grave monuments. Huge modular slabs of decorated concrete were being fitted together at one factory after another along the road for single and double graves. Then we walked up the hill to his own grave site where he waved us good-bye.

That night on the way from the Gem Market, five middle school students (about 17 years old) started talking to us as we walked along…hello…where are you from…what is your name…our English names are Zhong (John), Paul, Fantasy, Do Na and Steven…can we help you…listen to us…we have a good idea…all of us ending up eating delicious Burmese fried dumplings and egg cake and exchanging email addresses at a Burmese restaurant. About 10:00pm we were all on our way home when Zhong remembered it was his birthday…

listen to us…we have a good idea…catching up to us and bringing us all back to his parent’s home for cake with light delicious frosting. Then we all struck out for home again…the kids reassuring us that when their parents found out that they had been practicing their English with a couple of foreigners that the parents wouldn’t be angry about the late hour.

“Listen to us…we have a good idea!” So early the next morning the kids picked us up at the hotel and took us in the fog to their school to show us around but the headmaster was already visiting with some Japanese visitors so the guard wouldn’t let us enter. The school was out that day so the students could practice their dances in preparation for the “city party” which would celebrate the tenth year that Ruili had been designated as a “city.”

We asked the kids why the schools always had the names written on them in English…the country had joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) they said and wanted foreigners to come visit the schools.

Then again…listen to us…we have a good idea…as we went to a brand new internet room that was offering free internet on this it’s first day in operation…on the way buying us french fries with chili and a little plastic sack full of Asian Pear relish. We ate Over The Bridge Noodles for lunch…the waitress bringing to the table a tray of thin sliced meats and vegetables and noodles to be “cooked” in a very hot bowl of broth. That afternoon we all took a taxi to the Ruili City Park near the Ruili River (or the Irrawaddy River to the Burmese) where you could see Burma across the river.

While watching hundreds of students acting out various Chinese stories in the dances and music, Jana and I think we must have talked to every young person in Ruili who wanted to practice their English…do you like music…what is your favorite rock band…our favorite band is HOT (High-five Teenagers) from Korea…do you know what high-five means…then I showed them high-five which they liked..then I asked do you know the “brother” handshake like most young people give each other in America but this was met with blank faces and was going nowhere…we like American country-western music they said…we like John Denver and in our last English class we learned about The Carpenters…do you like pets…dogs or cats…do you like sports…we like sand volleyball…and tennis…and PingPong…Paul saying the Chinese weren’t as good at PingPong as they used to be…I like swimming…Jana said she liked running…Fantasy saying oh, that’s too hard…

listen to us…we have a good idea…

But we fled back to our hotel in a tuk-tuk before the afternoon was over…our throats hoarse from talking…and drank a Budweiser with a Chinese label in the warm sun in the backyard patio of the hotel.

The next morning, relieved not to be traveling by bus, we caught a plane to meet Bob in Kunming where we would proceed on to Chengdu Sichuan Province the next day by train. The only event of note on the train was my losing my sixth pair of reading glasses while bending over the squat toilet…hearing the clink and catching a glimpse of tortoise shell as they clinked down the metal pipe to the tracks below.

Bob’s Thai Village Visit

Posted on by Laughingnomad

While Jana and I were playing with Chinese teenagers in Ruili in the south of Yunnan, Bob spent some time in an ethnic village in the mountains in Issan Province southeast of Chiang Mai in Thailand. The people were Thai but smaller and darker…probably with a Lao or Cambodian background… and were very concerned about getting too much sun because darker skin color is discriminated against by other Thais.

Bob said he learned something about Thai culture from the people in this village when he hired a pick-up to take him to a Khmer wat (temple) high in the mountains…only to realize that nearly the entire village was going along when he saw them all piling into the back. And of course before the day was over when they all got hungry he was expected to buy the food! After a couple days feeling like he had been gouged, as he puts it, he discovered that it is the custom for the person with the most wealth and social rank (and foreigners are often perceived to be in this category since they have enough money to travel) to foot the bill.

Relationships in Thailand are governed by connections between the phuu yai (big person) and phuu nawy (little person). Ranking is defined by things like age, wealth, status and personal and political power. The phuu nawy is supposed to defer to the phuu yai and show obedience and respect. So Bob got to ride in the front seat of the pick-up but in turn he had to pay for the pick-up and the dinner. While eating dinner (three barbequed chickens and several spicy papaya salads) he received the choicest portions and they wouldn’t let him sit on the ground but gave him a prime position on the mat. The idea is that whatever wealth you come into is to be shared with the less fortunate and this especially applies to friends and family.

The school aged kids just stared at Bob…considering him a novelty…the little ones were frightened as they often are told by their mothers that if they don’t behave they will be eaten by a farang, a semi-derogatory term for a Western foreigner!

One of the villagers was an elderly blind woman in her 80’s who had never seen a farang so she wanted to feel Bob with her hands. She felt the hair on his arms and, touching each of his fingers and exclaimed, astonished, that the “farang hand was just like the Thai hand”…which cracked up all the bystanders. Bob had no idea what was going on until someone translated. He was very touched by her discovery that a farang was not a monster.

The next day Bob had an encounter with Thai justice when he was stopped on his rented motocycle by a police barricade. Apparently the motorbike license had expired. Three hours later and 500 baht poorer, the key to the motorbike was returned and he was allowed to go on his way.

After a few days kayaking and biking on Koh Chang, an island in the south of Thailand, Bob spent Christmas and the next day on a bus back to Chiang Mai. There he picked up a plane for the short hop back to Kunming, China and met Jana and me at the Camellia Hotel.

A Merry Christmas Wish 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

Today, Christmas Day, we will take Jana’s Blessing and a van back to Tengchong and catch a bus for Ruili on the China-Burma border.

While we sit here at 7:00am bleary-eyed waiting for the water to get hot so we can take a shower we are wishing each other and you HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!

It means good luck, Jana said as we listened to the cricket in our room at the Hot Springs…it was prophetic…we were going to have another adventure!

On the ride into Tengchong I wondered how much the automobile companies saved by not installing shocks on the minivans…another Chinese mystery. Then, eating noodles at a sidewalk stall in front of the bus station, we were delighted when a young girl sat down with her bowl…good morning she said eating quickly…she only had 10 minutes before her bus left for Baoshan…on her way to a rock music concert…oh we wish we could go with you we said…she plays the piano, sings and dances she says…so excited to meet foreigners she laughed…then seriously-English is very important!

Waiting for the bus we saw three of the six people we met at the Myanmar Tea House! Then Li Bing from the T.C.C. Cafe came in to see off a friend…wished us Merry Christmas and we wished him a happy Chinese New Year…

As the bus detoured down a pot-holed dirt road through some vegetable fields and across an old stone bridge to get to the next little town I said to Jana…you know…we piss and moan but I wouldn’t travel any other way. I wouldn’t either she said.

But we no more than smiled at each other over this thought when the guy behind blew cigarette smoke…and when Jana opened her window the guy behind with a mean face closed it again….can see him in the driver’s mirror she said…we could get into a big fight with him if we wanted, I said laughing…that’s all I need Jana groaned. Then we talked about how traveling was a metaphor for life…have to go through a lot of drudgery in order to experience the high points…like marriage or backpacking or running a marathan…but then of course you have a story to tell afterward!

On the way south to Ruili we drove through little Chinese villages…trucks full of firewood, full of sacks with contents of unknown origin, full of rocks…vendors on each side of the road with barely space for one lane of traffic wending it’s way…like through a parking lot…careful not to hit the women in ethnic dress sitting behind their little piles of oranges and spinach. Then through a town full of carved cement slabs for burial markers…ladies with cream-colored towel headdresses…then a pick-up full of ethnic ladies with bright pink dresses & and pink towel headdresses…people barely moving out of the way as the bus honks it’s way through…another whole town making nothing but bricks.

There are so many people in the world I say…everyone thinks they are the center of the universe. The “issues” we thought were so important back home have taken on a distinct perspective. We have it very very good and have no idea how lucky we are to be born in America.

Then ancient terraces full of green vegetables together with modern tomatoes covered with plastic and back up and over the mountain range on a dirt road that threatened to shake the bus into it’s parts. Our laps held a picnic of mandarin oranges, boiled eggs, crackers and water. But when a poor old woman, on her way to visit her grandchildren in Riuli ran out of her tolerance for switchbacks and vomited profusely all over the floor our picnic lay uneaten.

Then the bus stopped behind a long line of vehicles waiting for the construction workers to open up a way for us ahead. Everyone piled out of the cars and buses to sit on a grassy area for an hour and a half…waiting…while we listened to the entire Chinese Men’s Chorus…the chorus of hacking and spitting…incessently…one after the other…like dogs marking their territories we thought! It got to us…now we each have a cold. The women talk loudly…like they are angry…but we don’t think they are. Finally, it is a relief to pile into the bus again and at the summit the road suddenly turned from ancient cobblestone to blacktop again.

Further on it is impossible to discern the names of the towns…we think this must be a little like what the migrant workers from Mexico feel when they are brought to Oregon by the coyotes and sold into bondage to the labor contractors…not knowing where in the world they are.

Christmas At Re Hai Hot Springs 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

We went to Re Hai Hot Springs..a short half-hour bus ride from Tengchong.

The Asian and European continental shift also resulted in over 80 crystalline hot springs…grand Boiling Hot Cauldron…age-old Toad-Mout Hot Spring…Drunk Bird Hot Spring…Pregnant Well…Fairy Pool…Majic Pool…others…jade colored water bubbles and cloudy vapor…Beauty’s Bath…Pearl Bath…boiling hot.

At the bottom of the hill just outside the main entrance was the Jiaotong Binguan for 60 yuan a night for a double…only problem was that the WC was down the stairs and 50 meters away from our room…they had no rooms with bathroom. Showers were in a little room down the stairs and up some other stairs to the back of the main unit with a hot water pool about two feet deep and about 12×12 feet square…one each for men and women. The dreaded evil karaoke downstairs could be heard through the thin walls until late. Restaurant behind a row of triple rooms with no bathroom across the parking lot from the main building was great…they let us in the kitchen to choose ingredients….seeing what we get is part of the adventure!

Monday December 23
However, since it was nearly Christmas we decided to treat ourselves so we walked up the mountain through the park to the Bright Pearl Hotel…finding five giggling girls at the reception desk with no word of English. After a fashion we were able to secure a double room for ourselves…with all the amenities…WC (even if you did have to flush it by lifting the tank lid sideways), hot shower…and can you believe it…my laptop hooked up to the internet!

Tuesday December 24 Christmas Eve (for us on this side of the world)
We spent this day walking through the park in the sun…Jana took a dip in one of the pools…meeting five Burmese on her way back to the hotel. Where was she from and was she traveling alone…they wanted to know. Yes, she said, she was traveling with a friend…she was sorry that her friend (me) wasn’t there because she (me) and her (my) husband had just been in Burma for the month of August which they found very interesting…are you Catholic they wanted to know…surprised by the question she said, well, yes she was. I am a Catholic priest said one…the two women were nuns…and one of the two Chinese was a Deacon. They exchanged Christmas wishes and then the priest blessed Jana with safe travel.

Volcanos in Tengchong

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

A young Chinese woman on the bus had struck up a conversation in English…telling us about the sights around Tengchong. We thought that maybe we could pay her to guide us to the nearby Hot Springs but the plan was aborted after her friend drove us around in a minivan…we paid for an expensive Bai minority lunch…we looked at a hotel we didn’t want…and after the driver took us to a hotel that we didn’t ask to go to…and we still don’t know the name of. The receptionists didn’t know a word of English but we managed to get a double room. The lights dimmed every time someone used the elevator, the dreaded evil kareoke bar was on the next floor down, the telephone rang at least twice a night with no one at the other end of the line. It was ok though because it had a WC and hot shower after 9pm and there was internet down the street a few meters, through some big iron doors and up some dark stairs to a huge room full of young boys playing computer games. There was a girl on each floor with hot water and towels. Supposed to have had dance hall. restaurant, beauty shop but nothing was operating except the dreaded evil kareoke bar and the parking lot inside the hotel compound.

The first day we just hung around the neighborhood and found great homemade dumpling soup made by a very friendly Chinese woman in the market. Bought a CD of a Chinese pop singer and a bag of fresh peas in the pod and delicious tomatoes to snack on…and after some looking Jana finally found an undershirt…in military green camaflage.

We had lunch at the Myanmar Tea House…asked a couple of English speaking Burmese men when they had come to Tengchong…1988 one said…everyone exclaiming at once…one: I fled my country…we saying, oh, since the military junta took over after the last election…told one I guessed he was a University professor in Rangoon and he said laughing…oh, about 30 years ago! I suspect these men may have figured in the opposition during the last election. That night we went back for dinner taking my laptop to treat the owners and their son and a couple young Burmese/Indian patrons with bleached crewcuts to a slideshow of our month in Burma last August.

The next day we struck out for the Tengshong Guest Hotel where there was a map that was promised at the reception desk…first I and then Jana trying to gesture our need for information…seeing the wheels turning in their heads…big pain in the arse Westerners that don’t speak Chinese…until one receptionist gave Jana a card for the T.C.C. backpacker cafe!

After walking a mile with me limping behind Jana, we practically hugged 25 year old Li Bing with his long ponytail and big smile. You saved our lives in Tengchong we wailed. For two hours were reveled in our conversation in English while he cooked us a great lunch…club sandwich for Jana and fried pork with french fries for me…a nice break from the noodle soup we were eating since leaving Lijiang. In his traveler tip book a couple from the Netherlands wrote that both Lonely Planet and Let’s Go guidebooks were useless in Tengshong, “need to put TCC Cafe in those books!!!”

There are over 90 volcanic cones in Tengchong county…22 of them with preserved craters. Jana and Li climbed one large nearby cone called Dakong Shan or “Big Empty Hill” (which pretty much sums it up) while I gave a verbal little three year old girl, Zhou Xiue Ping and her mother, Yang Yong Lai, an English lesson in the warm sun…fireworks, shoes, pants vs the English trousers, ice cream. When I pointed to a picture on my Magellan Point-to-Pictures International Translator and said “tomato” she looked perplexed…finally saying “oh, tomahto!” Jana, having climbed the ubiquitous Chinese steps all the way up to the crater of Big Empty Hill said that the view of the valley peppered with craters was stunning…thinking about what it must have been like millions of years ago…all erupting…

My Name is Zhuy Yu Ping

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

On the way to Tengchong, the bus climbed high up into the Gaoligong Shan Mountain Range on a winding narrow two lane road…dropping down and then higher up again…beautiful valleys down below terraced with jigsaw fields of green winter vegetables. At the top of the Gaoligong Range you can step Eastward onto the European Continent and into the Indian Continent just a step Westward. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when the two drifting continents collided, the Gaoligong emerged from the deep bottom of the sea stretching itself from north to south, according to a Tengchong picture book, becoming majestic and mysterious.

The Range has a vertical climate…that is to say that if you climb from the bottom to the top you will find all four seasons in one day. Traversing the tall rain forest you see Azalea trees, the largest in the world discovered in 1982…25 meters high with a 2.5 meter branch span and a canopy 61 meters across…and Rhodendendrons as tall as trees. Then you see Bamboo groves and finally Pines, Spruce and Fir…snow-laden at the higher elevations.

We were headed to Tengchong, once China’s terminus of the ancient “Silk Road” leading to the Chinese/Burma border. By the side the road you could see weather beaten tomb slabs and deserted pillboxes left after the War with the Japanese. Sitting next to Jana on the bus was a nice Chinese man who suddenly turned to her and asked where she was from. He would ask a question and then become quiet and then ask another question…shy to speak in his little English.

Finally he wrote Jana a note with his name and address and asking her to be his friend. “My name is Zhang Yu Ping…I live in Xian Wei Yunnan of China…I work in factory of Skyworth TV…I want to be your friend…I don’t speak more English…I’m sorry…wait: I study more English…I will write (picture of an envelope) to you of my country and my home anything; and good news to you. I will call you and your home.”

When Jana showed him her picture of her and John by the ocean at Crescent City California he gestured with his hands toward his chest that he wanted the picture…and Jana, feeling like she had no choice at the moment, reluctantly gave it to him…writing her and John’s names and address on the back. He wrote his name on a 10 yuan bill and gave it to her…send to a friend…my name is Zhuy Yu Ping. I live in Xian Na in China…2002-12-19 and gave me a 5 yuan bill…send to a friend…my name is Zhuy Yu Ping. I live in Xian Na in China…2002-12-19. Then Jana gave him some stamps of Sun Yat Sen, the father of the Revolution, that her co-worker, Al, had given her to give to someone in China. I gestured tears coming down my cheeks with my fingers and he shyly smiled. When the bus stopped for gas a lady sold Jana’s friend a half dozen fresh hot boiled eggs through the bus window giving Jana and I each one. And who says the Chinese aren’t friendly!

Domestic Fight in Baoshan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif

The Lonely Planet description for finding Huacheng Binguan was difficult…the hotel name was the same but the street was different…two Dutch travellers sitting in the lobby with their backpacks told us we were in the right hotel…they had spent the day walking in the rain in the town…not much to see they said…and were waiting for the 6pm overnight bus to Jinghong. Our room in the hotel was not good by any standard..grody bathroom, shower pipe dripped on your back when you were on the squat toilet…no towels…no hot water except in a thermos. TV but freezing cold. The thing that saved us was the little kid hot water bottles we bought at a variety store that we filled with hot water and clutched tight to our chests under the covers. Walls thin…don’t know about the clientele…listened to a horrible domestic fight for an hour trying to go to sleep.

Lonely Planet description of where to find restaurants led us all over the place in the rain…we sat down in one street stall on tiny chairs at a tiny table and when we finally realized the workers didn’t know what to do with us we got up and left. We finally ate at a stall where plates of food were displayed and we could pick out what we wanted…eating and drinking our Dali beers while watching a table full of Chinese men play a drinking game that resembled Sticks And Stones. On the way back to the hotel we stumbled onto a market area with displays of fish and seafood but we had already eaten. Stayed only one night and left the next foggy day for Tengchong…the bus leaving just minutes after we got to the ticket window with our backpacks.