arrived in jeju & busy & lazy

Well I've arrived here in Jeju, South Korea, it's been ages since I updated things here on Teadiaries, mostly because I was busy trying to fit as much tourist-time as I could in Beijing and Tianjin and then when I arrived in Jeju I've just been - lazy. Yep, no excuses. :-D

I took a lot of pictures in China, over 1600 it looks like, I'll be going through them in the next week or so. And I've got almost as many stories to tell, I think. I went through a notebook and a half of journaling, jotting down Chinese phrases, shopping lists, random stuff on the street - all kinds of junk. I can't wait to go through it, and put some of it up here. But for now, let me start where I left off ...

From Dali I journeyed north to Lijiang, the "must-see backpacker mecca" of Yunnan Province. Lijiang is a difficult city to describe, probably because I didn't see too much of the modern city. The "old city" of Lijiang is a maze of cobbled streets, incomprehensible maps, and absolutely no cars. It's glorious and strange at the same time. My first morning in Lijiang I suddenly couldn't eat anything (and for those of you who know me, you know how out of character THAT is. ^^ In this tourist, no car dreamworld, there were no pharmacies, no convenience stores, and a 15 minute walk to a taxi to take me to any of those places. And considering that I didn't know what was wrong with me, or how to explain it in Chinese, I mostly stayed within my cobblestoned paradise. The picture below is from the main square in the Old Town, it was so hard to navigate around, but I DID know that the street which lay between the "Octopus Pill" shop and the "Dried Meat Yak" shop (zoom into the pic to see the names) was my way back to the hostel. Before you say "oh hey look there's a car" - that was a police van, he was seriously the only one I swear. :)



Met a Korean couple and two Korean students on a hike and we roamed all over together (and they actually gave me some medicine as well!).



At one point I got trapped down a well.



Lijiang is famous for its water canals, running all over the Old City. On the restaurant boulevard, I met a very photogenic cat.



And of course I had a cup of tea (ginseng), at a tea shop which overlooks the traditional roofs of the Old City.



My last night in Lijiang, weak from not eating, I realized as I stepped out of the internet cafe that it was in fact Friday night, and the city was alive. Sick as I was, I pulled out my camera and lurched around the streets, feeling like Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing, caught up in the carnival of lights and sounds.



Despite my sickness, whatever it was, while I was in Lijiang I took the bus out to Tiger Leaping Gorge and did an overnight trek - more on that next time!