Ascending the Mountains; Jade Dragon Snow Mountain & Blue Moon Valley

September 2, 2014

We took the bus in the morning to watch Impressions of Lijiang (印象丽江), which was an hour long. To be honest, I had no idea what was going on 80% of the time, but for some reason I really liked it and would definitely recommend it.

It was amazing watching hundreds of actors/actresses, and seeing all the costumes and props. They did a scene with lovers killing themselves at the Jade Mountain and in the end they got to be together, and that was my favorite scene :X It was very touching.

After the show, we had lunch at a buffet called Snow Mountain (?). The food was okay, but I liked the noodles. Finished the entire plate of food :X 

Walked a bit to get to the cable cars and it was super nature-y but it's soo much prettier after ascending.

Went up cable cars to go up the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (玉龙雪山). At this point, my heart was beating really quickly whenever I had to walk a bit, most likely because of the altitude. We were given cans of oxygen before we came here.

Half of the group decided to hike, and the other half (including me) decided to take the carts to go on this other trail that was...err more like just a place to see and walk around but not hike. It was raining at this point and kept getting harder so I kind of regret not wearing my rain boots or flip flops D: But it did go away after about an hour.

They had these cool wish charms that I wanted to buy but the shop was already closed by the time I finished my walk through the trail :\

When we descended the mountain, we visited Blue Moon Valley (蓝月谷) and it was sooo pretty.

The water was naturally a turquoise color because of the copper in the lake, and if you got closer to it, you can see that it is actually really clear as well. My camera died by this point and it was so pretty here too :'( Luckily, by the end of the day everything did clear up so we were able to see the peak of the mountain.

When we got back, we had dinner in the same place we did the night before, coincidentally. But it was a lot yummier this time because we actually ordered proper hot dishes.

We went out to look for Puer tea because I looooved the ones that they made for us at the hotel. I split half of the 饼茶 because I wasn't sure if I would actually drink it that much. It is a specialty of Yunnan, but sadly I couldn't find the exact one that the hotel has. It's supposed to taste better with age, too. We sat at the tea shop tasting the different ones, 80¥, 150¥, and 220¥. The first one was bitterish and very tea-like...the one we had went down very, very smoothly and didn't really taste like tea at all. The last two, we couldn't really tell a difference in taste, so we just bought the 150¥ because it was cheaper :P

Next was looking for the sunflower seed cookies! The path that we took was through where all the bars were..so it was kind of annoying having promoters all up in my face and even worse when they start touching you or grabbing you >:(

Lijiang at night

When we got to the store, it was really weird because when I went to the store, I asked a woman for them and she was like they're not called 瓜子饼 they're xxxx. Then I forgot what she told me it was, so I asked another woman what they were called and she was just like, they're 瓜子饼. D: It was only 6¥ for a box. 

Stopped by a shop and bought this for 99.90¥. It's sterling silver and I like the concept though I didn't like that the rings were trying to knockoff the Cartier design and while writing this, I looked it up just to see if it was a knockoff in general and turns out it is of the Love Necklace D: 

Walked around the city even more. I went back to the scarf shop that I bought from the day before and I was able to get another one for 25¥ this time >< Bahh. I think it's still a bit overpriced though, because I think I can get it for maybe 20¥ in the shops further out from the popular streets. 

While walking around, we actually ran into a bar fight and it was scary when I was pulled away from it. You could hear things being thrown around and breaking, and while some people gathered to watch, others were running away and the shop across from it even started closing its downs. When it calmed down a bit more, we quickly passed by and I saw that one of the men was bleeding a bit on the head.

Hehe I finally had a chance to go through all my photos so hopefully I get to the rest of the Yunnan posts soon. Until next time!