Dali

The good all year round climate supports wild plants that draw in tourists, particularly the laid back dread locked types. The old city is only double the size of my former home town, Peterhead, so it's easy to pass someone in a coffee shop who you met in a bar a few nights before, spend an hour chatting to them, get lunch, bump into someone else and another hour has gone by.  I've met loads of interesting and fun people to be around from many different nationalities.  It is so easy to wile away weeks or even months in Dali and not know where the time has gone, many people passing through choose never to leave. Apparently Dali used to be even more liberal, people would openly smoke herb on the streets and bars until Newsweek published an article highlighting Dali as the weed capital of China and the authorities clamped down. A shower can take an hour because you forget whether you've washed yourself or not, so do it again. I have no watch and my mobile broke months ago, so time is not a concept that means much to me. I don't feel my time in Dali was wasted even though I did nothing, you learn a lot from talking, listening and playing chess. 

I was excited to leave Dali even though I really liked it there, met loads of nice people and made some good friends. I don’t think I’d want to live there but I can understand why so many people never leave. One guy in the hostel had been living there for a month. He’d only leave the hostel to pick a bag of weed from one of the nearby fields then he’d lie in bed all day, only leaving his room to smoke a spliff, play chess and have the occasional game of ping pong. He’s a really nice guy and seems reasonably happy but that’s not the life for me, after a fortnight or so it would get a bit tedious. But if that is what you’re into then Dali is the place to do it. You can get a month’s rent for about £80, the weed is free; you get your room and toilet cleaned for you, shower gel, hand wash and toilet paper gets stocked up for you, the wi-fi is free, fast and bypasses the great firewall, there is a pool table, ping pong table and big widescreen television and cheap but good food can be cooked for you and delivered to your room. The cost of a cleaner alone would be about the same price in the West.

I was given a lesson on bicycle maintenance by Jane who works in the Jade Emu Guesthouse (best hostel in China) and an extensive lesson from a man named Jack who has cycled from Russia to Dali. He also gave me a spanner and a puncture repair kit and some clips to tie things and I got given climbing ropes by a guy in my dorm. I had a full set of clean clothes that had been washed in a washing machine. The Jade Emu is the only hostel I’ve been to that has a free machine; I’d been hand washing since Beijing, 4 months. With salvation by the cranberries ringing through my head I set off. I had to return after losing yet another pair of glasses, I bought spare tyres in Xiaguan and it came to 56 kuai. I gave him 60 and told him to keep the change. I then enquired about other things that Jack had told me I needed to get and was given a screwdriver, Allen key and a few adjustments to my bike from the shop free of charge. I was also told there was no way my 400 kuai bicycle would get me to Laos but they wished me the best of luck anyway (at least I think that’s what they were saying). I had been to Xiaguan once to buy a bike, 3 times to try and sort out an on-going financial thing and was glad to leave the city for the 5^th and final time.