NW Yunnan

I have been in NW Yunnan for the last two weeks. Highlights include Tiger Leaping Gorge (pictured), traveling with Carmen (she's now back in HK job hunting), snowboarding near Tibet, and donating books and computers to two needy schools. Consequently, I am totally exhausted.

Carmen and I left for Lijiang, Yunnan on March 9. Everyone else from my company came on March 15. In the meantime I made sure our plans for the company charity trip were in order. This was the second to last work related thing I had left to do.

Hehe, Carmen was a good sport to help go along with my investigations for the company trip. The company would have one full day to make donations and one full day to play, so i wanted to make sure the play day was a success.
My buddy recommended Tiger Leaping Gorge, and it ended up being awesome for everyone, but only because Carmen and I discovered the wrong way to hike 2 hours down into the Gorge during our investigatory trip. After getting all the way down a ridiculously scary path thinking it was the only way down, I got suspicious when an old local women told me that the spot down the river with a bunch of people wasn't worth checking out. That was right after she charged me a few bucks to cross a bridge that apparently her family members had made. We decided to check it out anyway, and ended up finding a much easier and actually more beautiful way up that everyone would be able to do.

With that and a bunch of other logistical stuff nailed down, Carmen and went south to a town called Dali about 4 hours away from Lijiang to relax. We did a cool horseback up the mountain (Carmen's first ever), had the best massages ever (and we are experienced), and chilled a lot in the western cafes that randomly pepper the town.

On the way back to meet all my co-workers we almost got stuck because all the bus drivers in Dali suddenly went on strike, something you hardly ever see happen in China. Despite having to spend loads of cash to convince someone to drive us back, the driver ended up being really amiable so it was worth it. He told us all about his recent 45 day road trip all around China with his wife and another couple, and also took us to a small town to see these old houses that are built around springs. We ate seaweed soup, with seaweed plucked right in front of our eyes from the the little spring pond.

The company trip was a big success. No one got hurt on the hike (for some reason nearly everyone opted to take the hard way back despite my warnings) and our donation at the two schools went really well. We drove along a ridiculously bumpy path to get the schools and our bus drivers were pissed, but in the end it was great to see all the happy kids.

Everyone left on Sunday, March 18, except for a few of us. We headed north to near the Tibetan border to do one last project for work. Our company does some economic development work, and we were asked by an international NGO to help convince the local government to develop in a more environmentally friendly way. The meeting went well, despite the fact that we stayed up late the night before to get prepared. And then the government officials decided to spoil us by taking us to their unfinished ski resort (the first in western China). Since the lifts weren't ready, we got taken up on jet skis. There was only 1 run, but there are plans to have 13 chair lifts and 22 runs in the future. The construction manager at the ski resort was probably to coolest looking Chinese guy i'd ever seen: young, with perfect black hair, a deep voice, and great looking sunglasses. We convinced him he should start to learn how to snowboard.

Latter I heard another side of the story from a friend who does environmental protection work in Yunnan who had been at the ski resort weeks earlier. Apparently a ton of villagers are getting moved off the land to make space for it. It's a tough thing. It's definitely better than mining, and its the government's own project so presumably it should help them raise money for local spending, but then again this development is aggravating the area's already significant deforestation problem and loads of tourists brought in by this development could further the gentrification that's already happening. I for one will be back next winter to snowboard so....

Currently I am hanging with my college buddy Ben and his girlfriend, at a friend's house in central Yunnan. We have decided to head to southern Yunnan in a few days, and then go into Laos. I'm in the process of sorting out malaria medication. Getting excited about the jungle.