Day 3 – “I think we should bike to Baisha–twice”
After deciding to wait another day so that I had a hiking buddy for the gorge, Susanne and I found our way to the Mao Zedong statue in Lijiang. It was here that we found “Ali Baba’s Cafe” where you can rent a bike for 15 元 per day, as long as you return it by 6:30. We headed out of town to the North to try to find the village of Baisha. We were hoping there would be a sign because the map from Ali Baba’s was not doing it for us. We kept riding and riding and riding and finally we turned when I saw the Chinese characters 白沙。 🙂 We didn’t really know what we were getting into with Baisha. Just that it was a famous village. So we biked and biked and found a cute little village (not Baisha) to bike around in. We took some pictures, biked around some more, and then found ourselves back in Lijiang. WHAT?!? How did this happen. We stopped at a place for some Yunnan Coffee to figure out where we should go.
Delicious Yunnan Coffee. And a 'biscuit' that came with it.
After drinking our coffee and talking to the woman who owned the shop–she was Malaysian and spoke English–we decided to give Baisha another try.
Back on the bikes. This time I decided to ask random strangers along the way how to get to Baisha. Each time I asked, the person would point me in the direction that I had come from before. This was mildly frustrating. So we persevered. Eventually we would find Baisha. We had to. It was famous. After about 25-30 minutes of biking we found ourselves at an intersection that we were at before. Instead of turning the direction we came from, we decided to go straight. This was the right choice. Now we could not miss the signs. Where were these signs when we needed them the first time? The frustrating thing was that we were practically in Baisha the first time, we just made one wrong turn. So, here we were, in the small village. It really wasn’t much but a couple of streets selling stuff and a few cafes. We had lunch in one cafe and wandered around the streets for a while.
This is Dr. He (pronounced like huh). He is really famous in China. Actually, I think he's famous because he's mentioned in The Lonely Planet. This was our main attraction in Baisha and he made us read all of his English news articles about him. He's very old. He is said to have "cured" his disease using only natural/traditional Chinese medicine.
This woman was taking a picture of us--the foreigners--so I took her picture. This is a common occurrence in the 'rural' parts of the country. 🙂
After leaving Baisha, we biked back the way we came the second time. On the bike ride back to town, I was chased by two dogs. Now you might think this is funny…and it was for about two minutes. I decided to bike faster but the dogs just wouldn’t leave me alone. By the time they were following me at full speed for about five minutes (thankfully there is no traffic on the country roads) I was fed up. I could not shake the dogs. Susanne is now way behind me and cracking up. This is funny if you are not the one being chased by dogs. All I know is that they eventually left and I was able to stop. Yikes.
We found our way to Mao Zedong’s statue. We dropped off the bikes, picked up the deposit and went to find some dinner. We ended up dining in the hostel as we prepared for the next day’s hike. All in all, Baisha was fun. I don’t think I would ever bike there twice again. 😉
I can only add one form of transportation to this day: bicycle! (probably my favorite anyway!)
