Just as Cathy and I had were conquering our jet lag and actually sleeping till 6 am we had to get up at 4:30 for a 5:45 flight departure to Dali. We arrived at 8 and got a new driver, Mr Mao, (YEA!) and a new guide Jimmy. Above is a partial photo of Jimmy chuckling at us – explanation follows.
Our first stop on our Dali tour was a small Village of Xizhou (she-joe). We started with a very slow crawl thru the village market. It was slow because of the women that were trying VERY hard to sell such things as Antique opium containers, (but made of plastic – hummm – I wonder), ceramic beads, old locks, coins, and silver hair thingys. They were packed around us and made it very hard to move – we heard our guide, Jimmy, laughing at the mob and telling them that there were more tourists coming behind us and to let us pass, but they weren’t about to give up a “sure thing” for some unknowns. I had been pegged as the “sure thing” because I bought the first set of beads I saw. (And kept buying until I had acquired the large pile you saw pictured in a previous blog). Ladies kept grabbing Cathy’s long hair and wrapping it around this silver thing they wanted her to buy – she finally gave in and purchased one but hasn’t figured out how to get it to hold up her hair like they did.
