Lijang, Finding our way
We explore the town, Lijiang China
After Yibin, we headed to Lijiang. Everything to do with Lijiang came from Alex’s cousin Ke Zeng who’d been there a few years ago. He said that it was a place for young people to go to recharge. This was definitely the case for us. After getting sick in Chengdu and going through Juizhaiguo and Yibin on minimal sleep, this was our resting up stop before HongKong and Malaysia. When we were figuring it out just days before leaving Canada, I figured that it would be sort of like a pitstop along the trip.
The first thing I should say about Lijiang is that we were nervous about being able to find our hotel without any english directions or a town map. When we landed in Lijang, we followed wandering earl advice to spend the first 20 minutes in a new airport taking it slow and gathering a map. We saw a sign for a bus into town and once we’d gotten a map were the last on before it left. It’s a good thing we got that bus too because it’s a half hour drive or so into town, although unofficial taxis are just 10 yuan more at 50 yuan (1.60$).
The Bus only drops off at one location and I measured the distance on our map to the hotel to be 3 or so kilometres away. Our address was a screenshot from a computer taken before we’d left Canada that had a small map of the nearby streets. Although we had heavy packs on, we walked down the main street from the middle of the city to the Southern edge where the hotel should be. But we didn’t see any hotels around. Some mechanical shops, expensive hotels, and a supermarket. One guy we asked while having a snack told it was far away and to take the bus but that conflicted with the screenshot of a map we had so we kept wandering around.
Asking for directions, Lijiang China
Then we went into another hotel and a wonderful young family explained to us that our hotel was in the ancient city. With the map we’d picked up from the airport and my translator app, we were able to determine from the explanation of a 7 year old girl that we needed to head back towards where we’d gotten off the bus and into the old town. They were a wonderfully helpful family and we’re grateful they set us back on track.
So we carried our packs and hiked the 3 km or so back into town. The ancient city of Lijang is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, although we didn’t know this on arrival. It is nestled into the sprawling city by hills and roads that define it’s boundaries. It is a maze of cobble stone pathways with little waterway gutters. The maps of the old town are somewhat helpful but after getting lost on several occasions, I chose to navigate by memory instead.
The old town was exciting to see and walk through because the architecture of the town so ancient looking. The wood buildings that seem to tower overhead because of the narrow streets and they’re all open fronts to the shops.
The small decay of the Ancient town is what makes it special, Photo by Yuki Lijiang China
It took us another hour or so in addition to the hour and a half we’d already spent to get to our hotel. That included asking several people for directions, and going into another hotel with the help of a passerbyer who was able to talk to Alex on my phone and then to our hotel who sent someone to get us.
Our Hotel was tucked away in a little quiet corner of the town on a street’s alley’s alley alley. Yeah, that far deep; there would be no way to find it ourselves. Fortunately, there was a small courtyard and another girl traveling with her mom who spoke very good english. She helped us arrange to get our train tickets to Dali in a few days and to tell us about the town. We’d go with her to have tea at a Jade store and then the hotel keeper took us to get train tickets and dinner.
A small pond we found wandering the streets of Lijiang Ancient town, Lijiang China
We went out for dinner with one of the hotel hosts and when he took another way back home via taxi so that we could look around a little we got lost in the town because I forgot the map and didn’t want to take the long known way back. After that though, I’d memorized how to get between major landmarks.
On one hand, Lijiang was a really relaxing town and what time we didn’t spend wandering the streets were just hung out in our hotel room. There are a lot of package tours to go around to nearby attractions but we were feeling cheap so we only did horseback riding at the end of our stay. This bothered us a little because we felt like we should go out to all these day trips but at the same time I was afraid of the language barrier and they didn’t sound all that worthwhile. So while we perhaps didn’t get the most out of Lijiang, we did get a good rest before Hong Kong and Malaysia.
What we did do was spend a day trying unsuccessfully to sneak into the Lion hill park which is an area that overlooks the old town. It didn’t work but the third ticket attendant that we asked gave us a student rate which was half price. Oddly, we didn’t see many people when we went up the 33m tall Pagoda which is probably because most of everyone is in the streets below buying trinkets and souvenirs and we went right before closing time.
View from Lion Hill, Lijiang China
