DATELINE: Dali, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

A night at an expat bar and an afternoon of sunshine and blue skies was just what I needed to turn my mood around. After writing my blog last night, I walked to a bar called Bad Monkey that I'd read about in my guidebook. The first sign that things were looking up was when I saw a bottle of Makers Mark behind the bar. After two weeks of drinking wan Chinese beer, cloyingly fruity cocktails, or vodka-sodas, it was a treat to sit at a bar and have "my" drink; it was comforting even, given my mood at the time. I ordered one on the rocks and talked to Adrian, the German bartender. The bar remained crowded with patrons and workers alike; at times I think there were 6 people behind the bar, talking and joking as they shoved around each other. The whole atmosphere was convivial, with the bartenders remembering the names of travelers and expats who had been through there before. I talked to a guy from Mauritius who was of Indian descent and now lives in Guangzhou. He had only been to Dali once before, a year ago, and the dudes behind the bar treated him like an old friend. We did a bit of barhopping, though the lack of good bourbon caused me to switch to Coca-Colas from glass bottles (doesn't it taste better that way?) On my way back to my guesthouse, I saw things were still hopping at Bad Monkey and decided to stop in. A different bartender took my order and he beamed when I ordered a Makers on the rocks. "I'm a Scotsman," he explained, "and it hurts me that people around here don't appreciate good whiskey." He said he occasionally hears people ordering Chivas Regal........with Red Bull. When he marked down my drink on the register, he said, "Oh wow, we've already sold two of these tonight!" I laughed and said they were both mine. Another bartender detected that I was from New York, which was where he grew up. He went to U of Buffalo, so we were even able to commisserate about our time in that city. I stayed until closing time, promising that I would be back tomorrow. The charming Scottish bartender, Russ, took me to his favorite dumpling house for lunch today (then back to Bad Monkey for a cup of coffee (no bourbon this time). I spent the afternoon wandering the old city and shopping in the markets. There are dozens of stores that, pardon the disrespect, all sell the same crap. The ritual of bargaining gets a little old, but there's always the option to leave and go to another place. I made some fun purchases for myself and others. I also discovered my new favorite street snack: cheese fan - a thin slice of goat cheese wrapped onto a stick, pan fried, and sprinkled with sugar. Tomorrow I've signed up for a Cormorant fishing outing (yay!) and ended up changing my bus to Kunming from tomorrow to Friday. Tomorrow night is the annual torch festival and my new buddies say I can't miss it. It's hard for me to believe that yesterday at this time I was feeling thoroughly depressed about this city.

DATELINE: Dali, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

Out of all the cities on my itinerary, Dali was tied with Chengdu for most anticipated. So far I've found myself feeling a little disappointed. Both of my guidebooks touted it as a bohemian backpacker paradise, with constant jam sessions in hostel courtyards and old Bai ladies chasing westerners down the street shouting "Ganja? Ganja?" (and YES, mom and dad I know better than to buy or use illegal drugs in a foreign country - but that tidbit seemed indicitave of a laid-back atmosphere with lots of cool people in my peer group). But so far the hostels seem like ghost towns, except for a few parents and kids. I also had to run around to find a new hostel because the one I had reserved placed me in a room in a building about 100 meters from the main building, behind an iron fence that I found impossible to open. The room smelled like bleach and had no television or wi-fi. Mostly, I was alarmed by the idea of coming back to my room at night and having to struggle with the gate. The hostel itself had no bar or restaurant, only a limited menu of items that could be ordered and served in the reception area, so it's not like there would be safe and fun options in-house. I tried 2 more hostels around the corner and they were booked. At the second one, the helpful lady at reception brought me around the corner to a locally-owned guesthouse that had a room for a good price. The receptionist also said that if I'm staying at that guesthouse, I'm welcome to use all of their hostel facilities. I was very apprecitive and after settling into the room I went back to the hostel for some fried local noodles and a vodka on the rocks (have I mentioned that China generally suffers from a lack of acceptable whiskey.) I also booked my bus to Kunming, so at least that's one fewer thing to worry about. The hostel offers a Cormorant fishing excursion, which many of my friends heard me talking about before the trip as something I was dying to see. With the weather as such, though, I'm not sure it would be much fun at all. I'm going to head off to a couple of expat bars to see if they can provide more insight into what, exactly, is supposed to be fun here. If nothing else, I'm sure I'll enjoy exploring the market and picking up souvenirs. I could use some cheering up, so drop me a line at lc_in_china at yahoo dot com.

DATELINE: Lijiang, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

Once again I find myself in a lovely place nearly by accident. Lijiang, an ancient city in Northwestern Yunnan Province. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage site, but threatened with having that status revoked as it became "too touristy." The touristy-ness was one reason why I didn't make visiting here a priority; the other was that Tony came here and ate only slimy-looking vegetable dishes that even he didn't seem to enjoy. My next stop after Chengdu was to be Dali, about 3 hours by bus from here. There are no flights or trains directly from Chengdu to Dali, so my plan was to fly into Lijiang, take a quick jaunt through the old town, and get right on a bus to Dali. Well, once again my plans were thwarted as I was inexplicably bumped from my flight, despite having an email confirmation saying "Your trip is reserved." The lovely people at Air China in the Chengdu airport dealt expertly with my near panic-attacks and managed to get me a seat on the next flight that evening, even though they had initially said all flights were full until Wednesday. I had a lovely bulkhead seat next to an adorable little girl (perhaps 4 years old?) and her mom. She was restless and I played with her the whole time. She kept opening the armrest thing, and I opened it and pretended to recoil in horror at the scary thing inside. She imitated me and got her mom to do the same. That game lasted a few minutes. Then we played "throw the flight magazine into the lap of the person next to you and exclaim 'Pwah!'" When the flight crew announced we were preparing for landing, the girl was exasperating her mom by fussing about the seatbelt and opening the clasp. I invented a new game: touch the seatbelt and pretend it's extremely hot and painful to touch. I'll be a totally kickass mom someday. So anyway - I arrived late in Lijiang, well after the long-distance buses had stopped running. I hopped on the airport bus to the city, then took a cab to the old town, where I had read in Lonely Planet, "Throw a stick and you'll hit a charming Naxi guest house." (The Naxi are the ethnic minority indigenous to this area). I walked around the charming stone paths (no cars in old town) and found one with a room for a good price. I then set out to find something to eat. I walked into a noisy bar. The host looked at me nervously and said, "no English menu." I smiled and said the Mandarin word for "beer." He brought me a Pabst Blue Ribbon in a *bottle* which I've only ever seen once before, at a dive in Brookyn Heights. The bar was loud and raucous. There were wooden blocks on all the tables, and every few minutes the clientele would burst into song and bang the blocks on the table. I was the only Westerner in the bar and was treated like a celebrity, with people approaching me nonstop to clink bottles. I met a girl who spoke some English and she took me across the street to what seemed like the only food stall still open. I pointed to a chicken skewer, expecting it to be grilled as I had seen done before. Instead, the lady put it into a wok of hot oil that must have contained some chili oil because the cooked chicken had a red hue and a spicy flavor. She sprinkled sesame seeds on it. I saw stacks of flatbread - a local specialty called Baba. It's a greasy layered flatbread stuffed with a mash of fruit and nuts. It was a perfect way to round out the meal. After taking lots of pictures with my new drinking buddies, I went back to the guesthouse and settled in to sleep underneath a cozy comforter. (I forgot to mention that the first attribute of Lijiang that I really appreciated was the fact that I had to wear my shrug for the first time. The temperature here is so comfortable compared to the scorching heat I've been subjected to so far). It's morning now and I'm sitting in a charming cafe next to the stream eating local specialties of fried goat cheese and local potato pancake. The food here is great: sorry Tony, but your fixers really screwed the pooch here.

DATELINE: Chengdu, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

Early in my trip, I almost made plans to bypass Chengdu because of bad weather. I'm so glad I decided to, as Mom would say, play it by ear. I have had a great time here and wish I could stay a little longer (but I'm also eager to get to Yunnan). I did experience my first rainy day in China yesterday. I put on my poncho and set out to find Chen's Mapo Doufu, the oldest mapo tofu restaurant in Chengdu. After much searching, and my map nearly getting ruined in the process, I made it. Wow! Delicious!! And for those of you who are shocked that I ate tofu for lunch, I must point out that it was topped with ground pork. The rain had gotten worse after lunch, so I decided to take a taxi back to the hostel, instead of a bus. It felt like I had to wait forever to find an empty one! (I guess it's like finding a cab in NYC in the rain.) I sat in the front seat of the taxi so I could easily show the driver my map, which was bilingual and also had directions to the hostel printed in Chinese. He shook his head and motioned with his hand that I should get out of the taxi. Not eager to go back into the rain, I did what any good New Yorker would do: I took out a pen and wrote down his license number. Well, he quickly changed his mind! He did try to get away with not using the meter though, but I quickly noticed and motioned for him to turn it on. Bam. Nothing gets by this chick. This morning I woke up early to tour the Panda Breeding Center. The pandas were amazing! I've never seen one in person before. The adult pandas had just been fed and were lazily munching on bamboo. Pandas can only digest 20% of their food, so they move around very little to conserve energy. They rarely mate and often have to be artificially inseminated. Also, mother pandas often lack a maternal instinct and become frightened and hurt their babies after giving birth. All in all, they are pretty much the most poorly evolved creature in nature; but they're adorable and beloved so conservationists work hard to keep them alive. I saw a tiny infant panda in it's incubator. It was so small that it wasn't even cute yet, just squirmy and pink. The highlight was a bit of a splurge for a once-in-a-lifetime experience: for a donation of 500� (about $75), I was allowed inside one of the panda enclosures! I pet and hugged a giant panda and a worker took lots of pictures of me with it. It was worth the money! I met some Israeli backpackers while on the panda tour, and they invited me to a Sichuan cooking class this afternoon. Tonight I will fly to Lijiang and begin my tour of Yunnan Province. In other great news, I was finally able to secure a train ticket! I'll be in a soft sleeper (the more luxurious option, with a curtain and only 2 berths stacked atop each other instead of the hard sleeper's 3) for the 23-hour journey from Kunming to Guangzhou. What an exciting way to close out my travels within China.

DATELINE: Chengdu, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

Success, and only 4 hours behind schedule. I'm treating myself to a taxi from the airport rather than taking the bus to the city center. Off to Sim's Cozy Garden Hostel, where, as the brochure says, "Rabbits run free and happy.". Sounds like my kinda place.

DATELINE: Chongqing, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader: "But I thought you weren't going to Chongqing!" Apparently my airline had different plans. I'm currently sitting in the Chongqing airport--actually, outside the airport in the plane, which was *supposed* to have landed in Chengdu. I haven't the faintest idea what's going on, because the announcements are no longer bilingual (I guess the crew's English skills were limited to "please put your seat backs and trays in the upright position.") Even the movie they put on is in Chinese (with Chinese subtitles! What a tease!). I'm popping a kloponin and hoping that I'll be able to follow the lead of my fellow passengers, since they are all in the same boat (er, plane). I'm itching to get to Chengdu, to eat some mapo doufu and see pandas. In the meantime though, I'd settle for stretching my legs and eating some KFC in the airport.

DATELINE: Xi'an, China 

(Click map for more useful detail)

Author: Lauren Cohen

The heat in this city is crazy, but otherwise I adore it. The nightlife here is especially vibrant, with neon lights everywhere and lots of vendors out, food and otherwise. When I was out during the day today, the heat and humidity were so overwhelming that I was worried I wouldn't be able to eat; fortunately I found a hand-pulled noodle cart that had gathered a crowd. Even though the old lady preparing the noodle dishes made mine with significantly less red chili oil than the bowls the Chinese girls I was sitting with were eating, it was still flavorful and satisfying. I was sweating so much from the heat and humidity that one of the girls gave me a packet of tissues. I really wish I understood some (any) Mandarin, because people here keep trying to talk to me, and I feel bad not understanding. Last night some guys were trying to talk to me and they called over a little girl to help. I couldn't communicate with her that well, but I made her laugh by showing her random phrases from my Mandarin phrasebook ("There is a problem with the toilet." "Is there a fitting room?") This evening, I went to the Tang Dynasty music and dance show. It was a dinner theater, and they served us quite the dumpling feast beforehand - including duck dumplings shaped like little ducks, pork dumplings shaped like little pigs, and walnut dumplings shaped like little walnuts. (Guess which ones were the only dumplings I refused to try?) The show had lavish costumes and scenery, good Chinese music, but most of all it provided a nice break from walking around in the heat to find my own fun. After coming back to the hostel, I decided to venture out again. I walked up to the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, then to the Muslim Quarter night market. While walking around, a ton of taxis, pedicabs, and motorbikes kept stopping to ask if I needed a ride. I decided that taking a motorbike was something I really wanted to do, so I went to one of the taxi stands and found a female driver so I wouldn't get raped (stabbed maybe, but likely not raped). I showed her my hostel on the map and she said she could take me there for 10 yuan (realy cheap!) I had so much fun on the bike, and the cool breeze dried all of the sweat off of my drippy forehead. I should be getting to bed reasonably early tonight because tomorrow I'm going to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. I hear that it's another sweatbox, but it's something I do want to see (besides, I'll likely be just as sweaty if I stay in the city). I hope I meet someone on the tour who wants to explore with me during my last night in the city - I enjoy walking around by myself, but there are some discos I want to check out and drinking alone isn't much fun.