A couple of days ago we had wandered to the Black Dragon Pool park, but the 80 Yuan (per person) entrance fee put us off after we read the wiki article (linked above) and a few Trip Advisor reviews, both of which stated that the pool was dry. After walking to the heritage park and finding that it is now a building site we decided to see if we could enter the park from the North for less. To cut a long story short we did. The Black Dragon Pool was full of water and we could see the spring gushing fresh water into the pool. One thing to bear in mind in China, you never know what is real and what is ‘fake’ (or staged). That could be fresh water coming from the natural spring, or it could be artificial, you never know. Anyway, the park is OK (not really worth the entrance fee) and it gives a good view of the snow mountain. More pictures can be found on Flickr here (near the...

Lijiang has been the best town we have visited in China. The Old Town has a great character and we went for a wander last night with the camera. We have been carrying a small tripod and so far it has hardly been used, but finally for these night shots it became worth the extra weight. All our Lijiang by night pictures can be found here. Posted from Lijiang, Yunnan,...

We walked from our hostel in the old town to the World Heritage Park. It’s listed on Trip Advisor with many reviews and can be seen on Google Maps, so easy to find. Well, a bit over an hour later we reached the location of the park and saw only building work. Maybe Google was wrong… So we continued up the road. Construction site as far as the eye could see… Maybe it was set back a few hundred meters from the road. Nope. All we saw was this: I guess in China if it doesn’t make money build houses on the land instead. Oh well.. we got a walk out of it at least. Posted from Lijiang, Yunnan,...

Yesterday we spent most of the day wandering the narrow streets of the old town of Lijiang. The contrast between the old and new towns couldn’t be greater. The new town is horrible, plain white buildings with no charterer, big busy roads and not much else. The old town on the other hand is great, the old buildings have character and the streets are narrow, winding, smooth from millions of footsteps and often have a stream running beside or under them. We visited Mu’s Palace. It was a bit pricey and not really worth the entrance fee; Only a couple of signs in English and apart from looking at some OK buildings that was it. We saw a better temple complex in Kunming for a tenth of the price. At the rear of the palace is Lion Hill which we climbed to reach Wangu Pavilion. The view over the old town from the 5th floor of the pavilion made the entrance fee (which was another 50 Yuan each) worth it. Posted from Lijiang, Yunnan,...

Another day and another good restaurant choice. It was recommended by the hostel staff as a place the locals eat. As we stood outside a staff member at the door called out “English menu”, never a good sign that this is where the locals eat. But when we entered it was full and not with westerners. The place was a little dirty but acceptable. We spent a while flicking through the menu (all the menu’s in China are about 30 pages) and deciding what to eat takes a while. The menus are so huge because they are all pictures, a thin menu is a bad idea as it’ll all be text and we won’t know what we ordered. Naxi style rice, Naxi twice cooked pork and a side dish of veg (potatoes and green peppers). Very nice. Annemarie at the 88 Snack in Lijiang Posted from Lijiang, Yunnan,...