Now how did this happen?

One of the young women running the guesthouse referred to me this morning as Uncle Coffee while she was talking to her friend behind the counter.
Surely my habit of ordering two cups at the same time for breakfast has nothing to do it.

Cooking

Rice & Friends is a new cooking school set up by a lovely young lady named Luxi. She speaks perfect English and has set up her cooking school in the court yard of the house she lives

Jasper and Senne from Denmark were the other two aspiring cooks and we were taught how to make a tofu salad that dispelled my long held belief that tofu is tasteless and should be generally avoided. Then we did an eggplant and garlic dish that was something I will definitely have to add to my repertoire back home. To finish it off we cooked a stirfry chicken dish with chilly and a sesame oil sauce.



I will post some photos as soon as I can persuade my computer to talk to the Internet again. This message is send from my telephone.
Edit 22/07/2011 Fixed

A walk through the hills.

The Cang Shan range is right at the back of Dali and I decided like thousands of others that today would be a nice day for a stroll.
To get going you take a gondola from Dali to Zhōnghé Mountain and then just follow the path, which is the only fully paved mountain trail that I have ever come across.
There are only very gradual up and downs with seats and little shade shelters every few hundred meters.
Hiking for the seriously lazy!



On my way up I got talking to a chap with the somewhat unusual name of Forest, who was here on a holiday from Taiwan, and we decided to tackle the trail together. Like myself he liked to walk rather then amble and we covered the 11.5 kilometer distance to Zhōnghé Temple in just over two hours.
To get down the mountain is as easy as getting up only this time you take a chairlift.
Another nice days walking.

Dali

I am currently in Dali which I was told was a quiet laid back town in the mountains. Well it's near the mountains alright. I's also the most touristy little town I have been into years. Sure most of the tourists are Chinese but they are tourists all the same. The old town is scenic but wall to wall souvenir shops and restaurants. I'll see if I can get up the mountain tomorrow. Apparently there is a nice walk along one of the ridges.

The photo is a pagoda that was build about eleven hundred years ago and one of the top attractions in town. The entry fee is over $20 so I just took some photos from the outside.