Not the Kind of Tie-Dye We Know

On our second day in Dali, after wandering the morning market and exploring a bit of the old town, we followed our guide Nancy through a small alley way which opened into the courtyard of a traditional Chinese home. This courtyard, however, was completely taken up by two large tables covered in a thick white fabric, a gigantic wooden bucket as tall as I am, all sorts of other tools, and most strikingly, dozens and dozens of intricately patterned cloths hung from strings crisscrossing the yard, dividing the space with huge swaths of color. Most of the pieces of fabric were rectangles, a deep indigo color with white designs on them, but some were circular and others more narrow rectangles. A few were red, or green, or multicolored the way we in America generally think of tie-dye, but most were blue and they fluttered in the wind, their colors glowing brighter in the sun: it was a beautiful sight.

Mountain Day Story

What’s up DS? I’m here to tell you all about a nice day going up and down a mountain near Shaxi village. We’ve seen a few mountains on our trip so far, but we had a much more thorough visit to this one.

Up until this point, we would wake up around 6:00-7:00am, something none of us were too fond of. Luckily our day didn’t begin until 10:30, so we all got some much needed rest. After a healthy breakfast, we hopped into our van and drove up part of the mountain for a few hours to go and pick up some lunch. We had the pleasure of eating our midday meal about halfway up the mountain, which provided us with a pretty cool view. Lunch itself was an awesome, unique experience. We had a barbecue pit in the center of our table and got to cook our own food on a raging fire. Overall a stellar meal.

"Can we take a selfie?"

We had all been warned that when we visited the more remote areas of China, that some people might ask to take pictures with us. I didn't really entertain this thought for long, and I think we'd all forgotten that it was a thing since Hong Kong was such an international city, and there were plenty of travelers from across the world. We certainly weren't a rarity!

Guilin, though, was almost entirely Chinese tourists. It really began when, on the roof of the Li River Cruise Ship, three old women grabbed Jenny as she came up the stairs and had her pose with them for multiple shots. A bit jarring for Jenny, but the ladies were very kind and absolutely thrilled that she was going to be a part of their vacation photos. They had asked first, and it wasn't like we weren't expecting it, so it wasn't too big of a deal. Though strange, none of us were offended, and we found it pretty funny.