After finished my breakfast, I went outside the hotel for some photo shooting before the tour begins.
The hotel we stayed for the first night - Uchoice Hotel, a 4 stars hotel
After a few shots, it's time to depart for the day tour. The first destination is the ancient gate located within Kunming.
Jin Ri Lou （近日楼）
Next, we visited the Jin Ma Bi Ji Fang （金马碧鸡坊） located at the town center.
Vivid flowers blooming near the Jin Ma Bi Ji Fang
Jin Ma Bi Ji Fang is actually two archways, one is known as Jin Ma Fang （金马坊） and one is known as Bi Ji Fang（碧鸡坊）. The two archways are actually destroyed once, and was rebuilt later according to the destroyed archway.
Bi Ji Fang （碧鸡坊）
Jin Ma Fang （金马坊）
After visiting the Jin Ma Bi Ji Fang, we went to our next destination, Xi Shan （西山）。Xi Shan is one of the landmark in Kunming, there's a few tourist spot on Xi Shan. The most famous one is known as Long Men （龙门）, known as the Dragon Gateway in English. Jacky said that we should hike until the Long Men, because there's a Chinese Idiom saying:"一登龙门，则身价十倍" (yi deng long men, ze shen jia bai bei), it actually means that once one get the honor, the social status will be greatly improve. But the people there believe by going through the Long Men, one will get charm and honor.
Xi Shan was crowded with people when we reached there, I saw many families hike from the bottom of the hills, which is 7 KM from the Long Men. Thankfully, I do not have to hike for such a long distance.
The trees at the parking area of Xi Shan
On the way to Long Men
Dian Chi （滇池）, the largest lake in Yunnan province, unfortunately it has been polluted
Long Men, the Dragon Gateway. There's a dragon ball underneath the wording, they believe touching it will bring them good luck
Crowded with people
After visited the Long Men, we headed back to our bus and prepare to leave Xi Shan to have our lunch. While on the way back to the foothill, we were caught in the jam for almost 1 hour 30 minutes, that's pretty scary for just a short distance.
Anyway, after we freed from the traffic jam, it just took us around 15 minutes to reach the venue for our lunch. The lunch for the day is Mushrooms Steamboat.
5 different types of mushrooms and more veges for the steamboat, great!
Mix your own sauce~
Herbal chicken soup, yummy
Mushrooms~!!!!!! How I love thee~
The red packet is the powder made from Panax pseudoginseng, aka San Qi （三七） or more commonly known as Tian Qi （田七）. Mix it into the soup and it taste nice
After lunch, we have to get ready for the 4 hours trip from Kunming to Dali （大理）. Within this 4 hours, what I have done can be summarize into 3 words: sleep and toilet.
After 4 hours of trip, finally we reached Dali. The first destination is - Restaurant for dinner.
Venue for dinner - Feng Hua Xue Yue Gong （风花雪月宫）, what a beautiful name
The restaurant is just part of the hotel
BBQ Pork
Chicken cook with potatoes, onions, capsicums, chillies
More mushrooms
Yu-sang （鱼生）, provided by our tour guide
In fact, there're more dishes, but I didn't manage to capture all.
After dinner, we headed to our hotel, it's a hot spring hotel, where each room will have a big bathtub with hot spring water supply. It's so nice to soak myself in the hot spring water in such a cold weather. After the hot spring water bath, it's time to rest to prepare for another day of long trip.
2 comments:
Dali is called as 风城，because of the strong wind. Did you see （樱花树） at Dali? They are very nice :)
Didn't see much 樱花树 in Dali. I think Dali is more famous with its 茶花, read it from 天龙八部。 :P
Post a Comment