[Mrvile]

So over the past couple weeks my family took a trip to China. This time around, we visited Yunnan province, and hopped from city to city. We spent a day in Dali, one of the more scenic places in the province. Anyway, enough talk, here are some pictures. And yes, they are absolutely real.

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Neat, eh? I wish we'd spent more time there. It was really the best place we visited during the entire trip. I'll post the rest of my pictures periodically in the Post Your Photography thread as I process them, but I felt that these deserved their own thread.

Sorry, I don't have any high-res versions of the pictures.

 

[sonicm]

Wow, that's beautiful. Pretty sad that finding a beautiful shot of nature is so rare nowadays, huh?

 

[mrdeadfolx]

That looks pretty sweet. If you dont mind my asking, how much did you pay for travel over there? Im on the hunt for a nice place to go for a well overdue vacation, and this just might fit the bill. Beautiful shots.

 

[nsx_23]

China has plenty of scenery like this, but people seem more caught up on trying to uncover china's political flaws (e.g. Tibet) rather than its beauty.....

 

[Mrvile]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrdeadfolx /img/forum/go_quote.gif That looks pretty sweet. If you dont mind my asking, how much did you pay for travel over there? Im on the hunt for a nice place to go for a well overdue vacation, and this just might fit the bill. Beautiful shots.

Well our trip was two and a half weeks total, and ended up being very expensive, especially the airfare (which was just short of half of our total expense, actually). The trek around Yunnan we took with a travel group, though our family was the only party in the group, and it included a private tour guide, a private van, and paid hotels. Our Yunnan trek included Quenming, Xishuang Banna, Dali, and Lijiang. We spent two days in Quenming and Banna, and a day in Dali and Lijiang. In the end, the week cost us about 7000Y per person, which comes out to about 1000USD per person, not including airfare or food.

The tour itself was pretty rough, we had to catch a different flight every night and check into a different hotel each night/check out in the morning, and we were only getting about 5-6 hours of sleep a night. We didn't stop running around, constantly taking long hikes under high-altitude sun or trying to keep our heads attached in bumpy rides in our beat up van. Looking back on it (we didn't have that much time to think during the trip), it was definitely worth it, but we were all thoroughly worn out when we got back.

I'm sure there are cheaper ways to visit China, but if you aren't familiar with the areas, it can be very difficult to get around. Beijing and Shanghai were easy, but trying to tackle Yunnan without the tour guide and driver would've been a nightmare.

Oh and let me warn you that, while these places might be pretty, the conditions leave much to be desired. Don't go there expecting a relaxing resort stay, they're a bit more primitive over there than we are.

 

[Mrvile]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nsx_23 /img/forum/go_quote.gif China has plenty of scenery like this, but people seem more caught up on trying to uncover china's political flaws (e.g. Tibet) rather than its beauty.....

Getting out of the big city into more rural areas like these was a nice getaway from all the political garbage. I didn't see a single TV outside of our hotels, which was nice.

 

[Zorander]

I think those pictures taken from North Korea are more surreal. That place really belongs to the 50's and yet exists in the real, if isolated, world.

 

[Marl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nsx_23 /img/forum/go_quote.gif China has plenty of scenery like this, but people seem more caught up on trying to uncover china's political flaws (e.g. Tibet) rather than its beauty.....

Doesn't take much digging. Also, this is pretty close to unhappy talk around this smiley forum.

 

[scompton]

When my mom and her boyfriend went, they traveled to the areas they wanted to go to and hired a local guide at each place. Supposedly, there are a lot of students who want to practice they're English.

 

[ClieOS]

When Westerner starts to look at traditional Chinese painting, they wonder how is it possible such kind of places existed... well, they do

 

[trickywombat]

Mrville

Your pictures are awesome! I visited Yunan a few years ago.
See if any of this looks familiar.

The Three Pagodas at Chongsheng San Ta in Da Li

Woman from the Bai tribe

Ancient city of Li Jiang

Restaurant row in Li Jiang

Dongba, a place of worship near Li Jiang

Dongba sacred murals overlook a horse pasture which used to be
an airfield for the Flying Tigers of WWII

The Tiger Leaping Gorge

A Tibetan barbershop

Workers walking home along the Silk Route in Zhongdian

 

[dvessel]

Amazing shots! I really like the one with the asian architecture and the mountain backdrop. Might be because I'm asian, but I always loved eastern architecture. Lot more organic forms and it fits the surrounding environment.

 

[Mrvile]

All the first several pics look strikingly familiar...I thought you had posted some of my pics!

The place with the three towers is the same place as my pictures of the monks and their temples. That place was incredible...they had just finished a huge maintenance and everything was clean and the place was very empty. Also, our tour guide for the Dali portion of the trip was dressed in the traditional Bai getup, complete with the pink headpiece and all.

Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of pictures from Lijiang because we sort of powered through it, we didn't have a lot of time. From what I saw Lijiang is a pretty interesting place and the ancient city is somewhere I would've liked to have ventured at night when it gets lively.

 

[XxATOLxX]

The rural part of China seems much better off than the urban areas. It looked like a fun trip.

 

[Mrvile]

I did find the Dongba culture pretty interesting, primarily the text. Here is a shot I took of a wall of their characters...very strange, similar to Egyptian heiroglyphs.