Dali, China
Sunday, March 26, 2006
It wasn't too early a start which was quite good as some of us were feeling a bit worse for wear. Today was my birthday and we had a six hour bus journey ahead of us, not the best way to spend a birthday, but hey compared to last year it was heaven! First of all we had to get back out of the gorge and back to Margo's to pick up our bags. We were all squashed into 2 tiny little mini buses, more like bubbles than buses. We headed out along the only road in the gorge, high up above the raging torrent below us. It was fine mostly until we came to parts of the road that had fallen away. Frequent earthquakes in the region meant the road was prone to falling away. It had been rebuilt, basically filling in the big holes with earth and stones. I was unlucky enough to be on the gorge side of the bus. Not being someone who is usually scared of heights you could say I was terrified. About 1km up and nothing below us but sheer rock face - great fun. We made it out to the touristy end of the gorge in one piece and had to wind our way among the numerous tour buses and tourists milling around in the road
. We made it safely back to Margo's and gathered our belonginings. Our bus driver from a few days before eventually turned up and took us back to
Lijiang where we jumped on another bus to
Dali. We reached Dali at around 4pm and had a little while to shower and get clean before we headed out for some dinner. We went to a lovely restaurant where I had yummy pizza and lots of pink lady's. Some kind of cocktail that had gin in it and was pink - very yummy and matched my beautiful birthday headdress. After we'd finished I was presented with a beautiful yellow birthday cake while everyone sang happy birthday.
We then headed further into town and tried to find a karaoke bar. We eventually found a bar with not many other people in it, but they claimed they had karaoke. After a strange game played with dice that I really didn't get, the guy on the stage started singing happy birthday to me in chinese and then in english, although it sounded more like happy bustday. He then beckoned me up onto the stage where I had to sing happy birthday to myself - quite a surreal experience. Eric, Alan, Phil, Lucy and I danced for a while and then decided to call it a night.
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