On a trip back to Jessica’s hometown of Kunming in the Yunnan province this past spring, we decided to make a side trip to Li Jiang, where its Old Town Lijiang is an UNESCO Heritage Site, famous for its waterways and bridges in the old city that has left intact as it were from the Qing dynasty time period, in style if not in substance.  The town was an important point along the old tea horse road as well as the ancient Southern Silk road.  The majority of people in Lijiang are of Naxi heritage, an ethnic minority in China.  Thus, the architecture style and culture of Lijiang is somewhat distinct from the rest of China.

We took an early morning flight from Kunming.  At the airport by the departure gate, there were touts taking reservation for cars, hotels, and tours for Lijiang.  (This is not unusual in airports here.)   The price quoted for the transfer from the airport to our hotel sounds like a decent deal based on amounts that hotel had mentioned to Jessica, so we signed up for a car.

The flight was a short one, approximately 45 minutes in the air, but it was bumpy.  We met our car guide coming out of the airport security area, who escorted to our waiting car in the parking lot.  The guide rode with us to the hotel, and he pitched various tour options we can take during the ride.  Jessica has been to Lijiang before and has ideas on where we can and should go on this trip and some idea on costs.  She ended up negotiating a package for the next day that would give us a private car and driver to take us to a few selected spots in the area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our hotel, Bayan Tree Lijiang, is considered to be one of the best five star hotels in the area.   The hotel is layout with receptions, restaurants, spa services and shops at the center plaza of the resort, with the two story buildings and villas for the accommodation spread out to the left and right side of the plaza.    Straight ahead from the central plaza is a small lake with a view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.  There are about 100 units at the hotel, including villas and spa suites, where you can get a full service massage treatment in your room.  The buildings in the hotel complex are built in traditional Chinese and local Naxi style.

As our room was not ready when we arrive, we decided to leave our luggage at the hotel and walked over to the nearby Shuhe Ancient Town, another of the old towns in the region that has retained the town’s layout and look from the old days.   It was about a 10 minute walk away by foot from the hotel.  The area around the hotel was very quiet, at least at that early morning hour, with light traffic and not too many people walking about.   We walked through a tree arcade canopy that led us to the entrance of the town.  It was only about 9:00AM, most of the shops were just starting to open up.  Shuehe has the feel to be a “living town”, that is, there are still people living in this town or nearby and the activities of the town seem to support the livelihood of the people living within its walls.   The main features of the old towns in the region are the canals and rivers running through the town, which was an important conduit for everyday life.   The restaurants and ‘cafes’ in the town highlighted special region food.  At that hour, we saw a number of the restaurant people washing and preparing the vegetables along small canals that runs by along the building.   The quiet street scenes bring about the thought of slow, lazy small town vibe with focus on simple daily routines.  Of course, here the draw is still tourism.

 

In the town’s center plaza area, there were a number of vendors selling vegetables and fruits.   Shuhe also has numerous “inns”.  These inns are more hostels/bed & breakfast than modern hotels, but we did see people staying there, including a number of foreigners.   In the old days, these inns served the large number of travelling merchants through the area.  Today, these places definitely provide an option for the visitors to live close to the ‘locals’.

 

 

Shuhe itself is fairly compact.  We were able to walk through the main portion of it in a little over an hour.  We stopped at a restaurant by the river for our brunch: Soybean milk, fried dough stick and rice noodle soup.  The fresh rice noodle is a specialty of the area.  The ones people cook here are made fresh daily, not the dry version that we normally see elsewhere.   We sat on an outside deck at the back of the restaurant with a view of the creeks and hills behind the town.    After eating, James dozed off for a few minutes while Jessica was checking out online chats on her smartphone.

We left the restaurant around 11:00AM and walked around the other parts of the town we haven’t seen and also did some light shopping in a few stores.  We picked up some small locally made small souvenirs and around noon, started looking for a place for lunch. We settled on one that Jessica though looked reasonable ‘clean’.    Local cuisine leans toward the spicy side.  Since James doesn’t handle spicy food well, we picked out a couple of more basic dishes that focus on the local ingredients that is light on the spiciness side, including a fish from the local river.

When we finished, it was around 1PM and we decided to head back to the hotel, hoping our room would be ready.   When we got back, our room was still not ready, so we went over to the library area and check things on our iPads.  Finally after 2PM, our room was ready and the staff drove us to our room in the golf cart.

Our second floor room came with a view of the Dragon Jade mountain as promised.  It had a fairly large balcony with a couple of chairs and table.  The room itself was fairly large; there is a sitting area with a large sofa on one end and TV and large desk on the other.  The bathroom was large, with a double sink, a tub and a separate shower.   The bed is situated when you can lie there and see the full window view if you choose.

After settling in, we decided to splurge a bit and headed to the spa to get a massage, a famous treatment at Bayan Tree resorts.   We selected to go with full body massages along with a sand scrub.    The private massage room was laid out in a very calm and smoothing environment, with soft music playing in the background and curtains drawn. There was a separate private shower and changing room, where we change into appropriate attire (they even provide disposable underwear to use.)

As the masseurs began, they asked us how much force we prefer and also told us as they move to different areas of our body.  After some light massages, they started with the scrub.  It was James’s first time doing a scrub; he was surprised with the hot materials.  After the scrub, we went to the showers to wash off the materials and return to finish off the rest of the massage.  The two hours went by fairly quickly, almost feel too short.  Afterwards, the staff led us to a sitting area where they had tea and snacks prepared for us to unwind before leaving.

We headed back to the room to relax further.  Originally, we had thought of heading out into town for dinner.  However, since James’ stomach was not doing well, we decided to stay at the hotel for a bite.  We chose the hotel’s western style restaurant.  Its menu wasn’t extensive but had some dishes that seemed to be worth trying.  One was the mushroom soup made with local wild mushrooms.  The Yunnan region is famous for its wild mushrooms, so we both ordered one.  Jessica went with a grill local fish along with a garden salad while James ordered a pizza with Cesar Salad.   However, they ran out of Cesar Salad dressing, and James switched to a Tuna salad, which turned out to be more Tuna Tartar with a few pieces of leaves than a salad.  But it turned out to be not too bad.

The next day was to be our big touring day, with a tour to the Snow mountain first and then to a couple of other sites before heading over to the Lijiang Old Town in the afternoon.   Our guide arrived as scheduled, and he first brought us over to a shop where we bought a couple of cans of oxygen and rented a couple of jackets for the trip to the mountain.  But just as we arrived near the gate to the mountain park entrance, it was announced that the cable lift up to the mountain was closed for the day (likely due to wind).  There was an option that we can just go to the plateau at the lift’s base.  However, Jessica thought that there wasn’t much to see there, so we headed back.   After returning our jackets (unfortunately, can’t return the oxygen), we started our drive to Lashi Lake, which is located north of Lijiang at about 2,500 meter elevation.  The drive took us up the hill a bit where we could see the vast plain of the Lijiang and surrounding area.

At Lashi Lake, the main attractions was hiking the mountain trails or for most people, taking a horse ride through the historic Horse Tea Trail led by the local guides.   We chose a tour that includes one of the longer horse treks up the mountain and then a boat ride in the nearby wetland park.   We were paired with a couple of small local horses and began our trip first through the streets of the local town.   While one guide led our two horses, we rode with a caravan of other riders.  The guides sing songs as people did in the old days as they rode through the tea trail.   As we go up the mountains, we moved along a wear worn path through the forest and pond.    This is where each group traveled along at more varied pace and also destinations.   Our guide pushed ahead a bit faster than most and we pass some of the slower moving packs.    While the ride was far from serene given all the other packs that were going up and down, it gave us some views of the mountains and valleys in the area.   James’ compliant was that it would have been better if we could have stopped at various points to enjoy the view more and take pictures.

We rode all the way up to near one of the top valley plateau where one of the source lakes for the rivers in the area is located.  The water in this alpine lake is crystal clear and cold.  There is a stable like structure near the shores, but that is about all the sign of civilization.   This is the area where it would have been nice to have a picnic.   We walked around for about 20 minutes before we started back the trip down the mountain.

After arriving back at our starting point, we took a shuttle to the estuary for our boat ride.  The estuary is a protected national wetland park, where numerous birds, ducks, geese, etc. could be found.   The area is said to have over 57 kinds of birds, including the protected black-neck Crane.  Winter is the best time to see the birds as that is when most birds can be found frolicking in the area.

The water level where we passed through was very shallow and filled with alage and other water plants.  The boatman used a stick to push the boat forward more than paddling.  Our boat ride was a relatively circle near the shore.  We saw a bunch of duck and geese in the area, but were not really able to get too close to them.

After we got back on shore, our driver took us to the Jade Spring Park in Lijiang, not too far from Old Town Lijiang.  As we hadn’t really eaten anything all day, we stopped off at a bakery to grab a few items along the way as fillers.   The park itself was quite nice.  It has many local varieties of flowers and plants and is set into a serene and calm layout, with walkways meandering through the ponds in the garden.  The most famous is the Black Dragon Pool.  There is a Pavilion set in the center of the pond.  This pond could be beautiful when it is filled.  However, Yunnan region has experienced drought condition the past three years.  The pond was almost bone dry when we were there.  There was only a small puddle at one end where a small number of fish were present.  Jessica said that this pond typically filled with fishes and water.

After leaving the park, the driver took us to the entrance of Lijiang Old Town.  It was about 1:30PM and we set to meet the driver back around 5PM to bring us back to the hotel.

Lijiang Old Town is much bigger than Shuhe, with wider streets, cleaner atmosphere, more picturesque and many more attractions.  But this is outwardly a more a tourist location than a real living area.  With a KFC and Pizza Hut right at the entrance street probably elicit that feeling.  We didn’t have a plan, but just wandered through the different streets looking at anything of interest, and to pick out places where we may want to eat.   There were many restaurants inside Old Town.  Some can be call bars as they have music and are catered to tourists.   There was also a plaza area where a number of vendors sold specialty snacks, from grill meat and fish to dumplings and Chinese sandwiches to sweet crepes and cakes.   James was itchy to try, but with his stomach still recovering, he had to hold of.   The shops are mostly selling basic souvenirs, though some are locally craft products.   We walked around a couple of hours until we got to a more remote part of the Old Town and were a bit lost.  After a few attempts, we finally got back to the path we recognized and start thinking about where we should eat and rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided on a restaurant that had a large seating terrace next to a canal that served a mix of items.   Along with juice, coffee and cake, we ordered the some fried small fish and rice noodle soup, two local specialties.  The small fried fish was especially good.  We sat in the shades as we munched and did some people watching.  We meandered through our food for over an hour before we decided to head back.

 

On our way back to the hotel, the driver took us to a large show room that sells mostly jade jewelry.  The place was about half a football field long, lined with rows and rows of counters with all sorts of jade products.  This was one of the side trips for our ‘tour’ package.   It can be a bit inconvenient but probably saved us a few bucks.  Jessica looked at a few things and asked about a few items, more to get some prices than to really buy them.  But this place we went to does offer something that is hard to beat:  It will buy back any Jade piece you buy there at the cost you had purchased at any time.

We returned back to our hotel just after 6PM.   Because both of our stomach wasn’t feeling too great, we decided to just get some light bites from room service and watch some movies to get ready for our return the next day.