A day late, but not a penny short.

So this is Dali, in the Yunnan province. Its actually Old Dali. Our hostel was not the most pleasant, but definitely not the worst. The bathroom was downstairs and outside in another building, but they actually had TWO sitting toilets and after some spicy food and a long train ride I was grateful for that. The showers were also downstairs, outside in another building, but thats just the waythings are here. Can't worry about it too much. A girl from california took this picture and we were SOOO excited to speak american english to someone.Waiting for us in Dali were thousands and thousands of the most terrifyingly humongous, ferocious looking spiders. They had webs EVERYWHERE!!! Heather, they make the Antelope Island spiders look like childs play. Fortunatly these guys like to stay high in the trees and were not aggressive at all. If someone cares to google this little spider and identify it for us it would be great. I'm really curious. The locals all said they were harmless but how can something that ugly and scary be harmless? If nothing else, they cause high blood pressure, especially when on a horse ride through the trees when you can't control your horse and at any second he could wander through a web.

Its hard to comprehend the size so I got brave and got very close to one. I was about 6 inches behind this little teddy bear in the picture. Its not even the biggest one we saw.

So this is probably one of the coolest adventures we've been on. While driving a mean bargain on the streets for some weird hair doolies the cute old guy in the background of this picture came up to us with a little picture book and some english written in it. Basically it said he would like to take us to his village and take us fishing on his boat with his birds (for a price of course), but what better way to really experience the DALI culture. Of course we agreed. These birds were amazing. They fisherman just pick them up by the neck. The birds squak but overall I don't think its hurts them because they don't run away and are not restrained while on shore.

This was the guy who found us on the street, and the other guy that came with us was his brother. They were really funny. They even sang to us in chinse while they rowed the boat. Unfortunatly that video is way to big for this itty bitty bandwidth.
The birds ride on the side of the boat and then when they get out in the water they just grab them by the neck and chuck them into the water. They push the boat around in shallow water rubbing the bottom and pounding on the metal boat to stir up the fish so the birds can catch them. Fortunately we only caught 3 fish. They wanted us to eat them but I told them I was buddist. They got the point.While we were hanging out in the boat, all of a sudden we heard a motor boat going past and the two brothers kinda freaked and shushed us and hurried and put two little rice hats on our heads. After some charades we figured out it was the cops. I'm sure the fisherman would have gotten in trouble for having tourists and probably not paying the government their cut. We sat very quietly with our hats on for about 20 minutes before the boat went back past us. Luckily we were in some trees with the scary spiders and the cops didn't see us. The brothers told us the spiders wouldn't bite but we still freaked out when we got near them.They tie a little string around the birds necks so that it can't swallow the fish. If the fish is small they can swallow it, but if its too big then the fisherman grabs it out of the water and squashes the fish out of its mouth. Seems cruel but the birds don't seem to be too upset cuz they don't run away. I'm pretty sure they are well taken care of.

Here's michelle practising her new fishing skills, grabbing the bird by the neck just like a pro. hmmm, was that before or after she accidentally stepped in the foot deep compost pool. yummy! There are SOOOO many beautiful vegetables in Dali. There are hundreds of farms here and they have some interesting and some familiar vegetables. This is a little vegetable creation we came across on the street. Quite creative if you ask me.

People all over china love to take pictures of us and with us. These kids were terrified but their parents forced them to get their pictures taken with the white people. The other kid wouldn't go to me and quite frankly I didn't feel bad. He could sense my apprehension with children. On the other hand, michelle loves the little snot nosed kids.

These girls are rockstars from England. You know who you are. hehe. THanks for having fun with us.

Me and Michelle are imitating brits and Amy was imitating a yank. She's pretty good.....she would fit right in in Utah.
These are all the friends we met at a late night western club in Dali. They loved buying us drinks.
So the same guy that took us fishing hooked us up with a horse ride up the mountain. he didn't go with us, but they guy that took us was really nice but totally farmer/cowboy chinese style with very few teeth and the ones that he DID have would have even scared the folks on extreme makeover. We didn't even steer the horses, he just yelled at them and mostly they knew the way. IT was quite fun. The horses were pretty small and skinny and I felt bad putting my big american butt on them, but what can you do right?

So here are the lovely three pagodas of Dali, Yunnan province. They are much bigger than they look. I guess there was an earthquake in the early 1900's that made the smaller ones a littly crooked. They renovated them about 50 years ago. This is a HUGE park. Tons of temples and statues. I don't even have time to put all the pictures. It was up the side of the mountain and had millions of stairs.

Its hard to describe the statues because they are so enormous and so beautiful. Some are gold and some are stone, and some are just painted in crazy colors, but they are massive....filling entire buildings. The 3 pagodas park probably had about 30 different temples/buildings. SOme with just one statue of a God.

This is some delicious food we had at the 3 pagodas park. We were about to starve to death and were looking for food and it was like a beacon in the night "VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT." In english. If we weren't so famished we would have ran. It was delicious and the drink if apple juice...basically just blended apples served warm. It was delicious.
This is some food we had in town at Dali, but I felt inclined to put it next to the other food picture. Its the local cuising of the Bai people who inhabit Dali. It was really really spicy. On the right is my favorite tomato/egg dish.

This statue filled an entire building that was about 3 floors. Its hard to see how big it is, but michelle in the lower corner can give you a little perspective.
THere were about 9 of these statues in one building, they are darker stone and really gorgeous. They were even bigger than they look in the picture.
A top down view of the 3 pagodas. I don't have the pics but while we were overlooking everything 3 chinese guys asked if they could take pictures with us. Either they thought we were really hot or just really strange looking.


Most of you americans have never heard of such a thing as an overnight sleeper bus, so I feel it my duty to inform you to steer clear. We were excited at first, but we were quite disappointed and tired by the end. The beds were smaller than train beds, and it was much bumpier, but that wasn't the bad part. The folks on this bus clearly had no rules of personal hygiene. It was so stinky!!! Besides the major B.O. was the smoking. There is technically no smoking allowed, but try telling that to a chinese person! They can smoke anywhere and any time here. The bus must have stopped at about 3 or 4 different bus stops over the night. I don't even want to talk about the bathrooms at these bus stops. I would have rather peed outside in the dirt, on the side of the road, in a bucket, anywhere. whew! well, cheers.

Oh, and p.s. For those of you who don't leave comments......we think you are totally lame. Just FYI.