Dali

On the spur of the moment (very P of me), I decided to go to Dali 大理 for the weekend, which is a convenient 5 hours away from Kunming. Poor Dali has been battered recently from the usual backpackers' trail, superceded by Lijiang, but it does benefit from being surrounded by mountains and being right by Erhai Lake.

I arrived very early into Dali, when most of the town was still sleepy, but I found a lovely little place to have breakfast. I'm not sure what it was, someone else was eating it and it looked good, probably some kind of rice thread noodles 米線 - not as spicy or oily as the ones I'm used to in Kunming, but a great start to the day:

I only had basically one and a half days to explore, so the first day hired a bike, and went on a big bike ride around the lake, and am so glad I did. A lot of the locals were staring at me riding along, wondering what the hell I was doing, but it was gorgeous to get away from the tourist trail and just bike through lots of little villages, seeing all the villages doing their farming. After about 2 hours at a gentle pace, I arrived in the town of 喜州, a Bai minority town locally famous for its traditional Bai architecture. So pretty, it even inspired me to take a non-food picture:

I didn't stay here that long, but long enough to eat their specialty, the 破酥粑粑, roughly translated to flakey skin 'baba', a bread with a flakey crust, stuffed with spring onions and minced meat, or there is also a sugary sweet version. The savoury version is not unlike a stodgy version of a 蔥油餅 - I really liked the flakey outer crust, but found the inside stodge a bit hard-going:

The reason why I impulsively went to Dali was because I keep spotting little street carts serving Dali cold noodles 大理涼麵 in Kunming, and thought I need to try it in Dali itself. I must say this was a food discovery and a half, I couldn't stop eating them after my first bowl. The concept does sound a bit off - clammy cold noodles doesn't sound appetising - but with the aid of some vinegar, soy, chilli, a few peanuts, and some coriander, it is so refreshing, very 開胃! My first bowl was at a place which has multiple branches in the non-guilo bit of Renmin Lu, which seemed famous for their 雞涼米線:

I indulged in another bowl at the top of Cangshan just outside the temple, this time with 麵條 wheat noodles rather than rice threads 米線 - must say I liked it better than the 米線, had a bit more chew in each noodle (and probably helped by the fantastic sunshine I was sitting in):

I met two British Indian medical students from UCL during my stay in Dali, so so so nice to speak to British accents, and we inevitably found ourselves in Bad Monkey, a bar run by a couple of guys from East London. But their experience made me realise how much the backpackers must miss out on by having to rely on the foreign cafes that serve a variety of both Western and Chinese food. I went to the supposedly recommended Bamboo Cafe in the guilo bit of Renmin Lu for dinner one evening, which supposedly served authentic Bai cuisine. How wrong I was! I ended up with very Cantonesey red braised tofu and prawns with vegetables - so disappointing!

I inevitably woke up on Sunday morning with a bit of a hangover (it's Kaj's fault for mentioning jage-bombs to me), and spicy food just did not appeal for once. But I remembered there was a 北方 Northern dumpling restaurant just down the road, and 餛飩 wontons sounded like a good hangover cure - pure, light, cleansing! The wontons themselves were nothing to write home about, but I really liked the broth they came in. There were little bits of seaweed floating in it, and also these cute little miniature dried prawns - very very tasty:

The non-food and mildly interesting spot (if you're part of Uncle B's wider family) was the awesome combination of shops I saw in Dali - in Berlin, we saw the infamous antique shop that was also a pet shop - in Dali, I spotted a travel agency that was also a place for you to shower (!), and also a travel agency which was also gave massages. I guess there is an element of customer-sharing (us tourists do like to shower after all)...

Next week takes me to Lijiang to see Roger and some newer members of Uncle B's family.