LuoPing Spring 2014 (moved from old blog)

 

Mellow Yellow in LuoPing

 

LuoPing is a little place about a 4 hour drive from Kunming, which for a few months a year is swarming with tourists and travellers attracted by the blooming Rape Seed flowers. There are only two or three months a year in which these flowers bloom and suddenly the whole countryside is turned yellow as far as the eye can see.


Six of us packed up and made the journey in style, in our rented van complete with driver, for a mini weekend trip away. 

Day one was filled with views of flowers and plagued with bees. The weather was fantastic so we managed to get some beautiful photos. There seems to be one very famous scenic point which was rammed with people. 

If you google LuoPing it seems to be this one place that comes up first. We were dropped off for a few hours whilst our driver went for a snooze in the van. The area is a huge expanse of fields of flowers with little mound/hilly outcrops all over the place, which gives the area a bit of a weird look. There was also a much larger and higher viewing platform which involved a heck of a climb. 

About twenty minutes later and on our hands and knees we crawled onto the platform and posed for photos from all directions. The whole place smelled like a car full of little tree air fresheners with millions of bees swarming in all directions. we were told that if a bee landed on us we were told to just leave it be and not swat at it or that would piss it off, I could understand that people hitting me upsets me too. 

We spent the entire time we were at the flowers covered in bees and feeling a little nervous. Only David managed to get stung much to his disgust and our amusement and relief. Because of all the bees the area was literally dripping in honey, most of which we sampled, and I left with some fantastic honey for my breakfast toast. 

The view was incredible and unlike anything I have seen in China to date. Our pictures inspired a whole host of people from Kunming to make the journey and now almost everyone has visited the flowers in bloom.

One of my old TA's is from LuoPing town which was about half an hour from this flowers scenic area and she had found us a hotel to stay in for the night. The whole town was about four streets big and yet somehow it still took us ages to find the hotel.

The next morning we got up and the weather had changed from beautiful blue skies to cloudy and sometimes drizzly, so we headed off for the JiuLong waterfall (Nine Dragon waterfall). 

From the car park it was about a twenty minute walk along the river to the main waterfall. Luckily the weather stayed dry and we managed to get some nice pics and a pretty decent view. It had got a little colder so coats were broken out and we carried on in true tourist mode. 

The tallest of the waterfalls had a large pool at the bottom with little bamboo boats floating about for our photographic and seafaring needs. We jumped on the boat and the Chinese couple with us, who were scared of falling in, stayed on the shore and watched us giggling. 


We left the waterfall a little cold and damp and started our journey back to Kunming. 

We only had one more stop on the way, other than dinner of course, and that was at the terraces a little way out of the town. We drove up the side of a mountain and through many little windy and too narrow feeling roads and eventually came across a collection of other people and buses parked at the side of the road. the view was amazing and the pictures don't even do it a little justice. The terraces were all swirly little patterns and cool shapes making silly little face shapes in the yellow. Several hours later we were back in Kunming and still seeing yellow everywhere we looked. 

It only took three years but I finally made it to LuoPing and I am so glad we got out butts into gear and organised the trip. A shattering but good trip was had by all. 

Dali Spring 2014 (moved from old blog)

 DianChi does DaLi

Having been re bitten with the mini trip adventure bug, I was keen to get out of Kunming for the weekend again. So we got straight to work on the next one and decided on the old faithful DaLi. 
Pretty much the same group of us who stormed LuoPing, plus a few additions, made the epic journey on the overnight sleeper train to the neighbouring city. We jumped on the train with my own special brand of specialised coke/sprite/Pepsi (with a little something added to help with the stresses of the journey). 

After the recent attack at the station we were advised to get there a little early because of all the extra security checks. We only came across a few extra guys with big sticks and a little more of a touchy feely guy at the metal detectors. 

Anyway, no problems and we were on the train bickering about who has to clamber up onto the top bunks. We ended up in the part between the carriages as we were being too noisy and before going to bed we were told off a further three times by slightly grumpy and pissed off looking train security guard who was obviously not enjoying his job that night. 

Anyway we arrived and jumped into a little mini bus thingy and headed for the old town. getting close we realised that there was a festival in the process and the roads were closed off, so we had to walk the last part. 
Having been to and witnessed several Chinese festivals I know that I don't particularly like them. The majority of the stuff available is inflatable hammers, candy floss, silly hats and so on so I avoided like the plague. Apparently it is one of the longest running annual festivals in China but this may have been made up to make the thing seem more impressive or it may have been true, who knows!

As is always the case when we head away as a group, things tend to get childish. David for example taking an iron on a 24 hour trip and ironing his trousers on the bed earen his the name Press Man and an elaborate back story involving radioactive irons was invented. Also a mammouth crap joke and pun sesson was started, which thanks to Mam and Dad I was more than prepared for. 

We did all of the DaLi essentials, Bad Monkey breakfast and beer (not at the same time of course), shopping for silly earrings and jewellery, the bakery and a relatively new addition to the DaLi routine, an e-bike trip to the lake. I am not hugely confident on e-bikes so the first and last part of the trip are usually pretty hair raising. About the lake though is a very quiet and chilled out road so we can take it easy and chilled. Sadly on the way back we got lost and ended up in the middle of the festival i was telling you about earlier. The road was basically a car park with buses honking horns everywhere. As we squeezed through the tiny gaps between buses and truck, all I could think of was the scene in Star Wars where the walls begin to close in on them. It was not a pleasant experience and I took my bike back to the shop feeling a little frazzled and so thankful to be on feet again and not wheels. 

Being a mini-adventure, we were back on the train the following evening heading back for Kunming.