Third time to Lijiang. As of March 2007,
Do:
- visit Afternoon Sun for the Lavazza coffee and espressos (while in China, I haven’t found Lavazza anywhere)
- visit the Prague Cafe for great ambience, a good mix of Western and Chinese food, good coffee (however, they recently removed their computer and internet)
- all the rest of that touristy stuff (horse back rides, go to Zhongdian/Shangri-La for a while, get lost in the Old Town)
- try to get a shot of the Snow Mountain without clouds, it’s rare
- visit the Snow Mountain and take the tram up the side of the mountain
- try some of the local food, either at the street kiosks (er kuai, dou fu, etc) or just outside of the Old Town. Most places have menus with pictures, if not, just say, “Sui bian ni!” (“Whatever is fine!”) and wait for the bees and intenstines and all that good stuff
- go shopping, but try to find things that are unique to Lijiang (hand made or hand crafted things), and not things you can find in every other city in Yunnan (like Mingzu clothing, fakey jade, fakey silver, Mingzu dolls, traditional “Chinese” clothing, etc)
- help others take photos so a brother can be with his women in the shot
Don’t:
- visit the “screaming bars”, they’re loud, service is bad, very gimmicky
- go to KFC, don’t be like the rest of the lao wai
- expect western food to compare to your home town, it’ll be “just okay” at best (except for the coffee at Afternoon Sun)
- expect the Chinese food to be great (Lijiang is very touristy, food quality is lower than average)
- book a trip with a Chinese tour company. I’ll blog about that later. They’re lame and you only get to see “surface-level” China
- openly complain about no soap in the bathrooms, or any other rant I overhear all the time, you’ll come off sounding crazed and paranoid (ie, get over it)
- buy any jade or silver in Lijiang, it’s overpriced, but worse, 95% of it is fake (doh!)
That’s all I can think of for now. Good luck. Photo above is a flower patch of the main strip in Lijiang.
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