Soft landing

We are flying into Lijiang and experiencing some turbulence. The plane drops, then sways to the right, then to the left, then drops again. It has my full attention now. Yang is next to me trying to finish off a nap. The passengers next to us are making noises like they are on a roller coaster. Not the I’m scared to death type noises but rather I am having the time of my life noises. “Wheeew…. Wheeee… haaaaaaa…. wooooo”. The main cheer leader was a woman who looked 60 but was probably my age dressed in the local naxi style. Which is a bit hard for me to describe, not because it’s hard to describe in an absolute sense but I’m just not very good at describing what people wear. The best I can do is say she looked like a waitress but that would not be fair to her. Even less fair is that on the way out I noticed she was wearing a towel on her head. I don’t mean that in some horribly offensive way like an ignorant American would say about a turban. I just mean she really had a towel on her head. A nice one. I found myself thinking it was a very clever way to travel.

Our trip to the hotel was filled with all the mistakes a first time tourist would make. Which is to say we made all the right moves. First, we got into the first taxi we saw and did not negotiate the price down from the stated 80 RMB. On the off-meter drive into town the taxi driver did the inevitable upsell that he would be available to be out driver the next few days. Of course he would, it would be much better paying than the 1-2 airport trips he makes a day. Then he mentioned that our hotel wasn’t so close to the old town tourist area and that he knew a better one. So we went there and booked a room for 440 RMB a night, again no negotiating. The delta between rookie mistake and good experience is Yang. On the way into town she talked to the driver, learned we both have three kids and his son is at university in Beijing. Our hotel room looks over the old town with a spectacular morning sun over the rooftops of this UNESCO world heritage site. The hotel itself is courtyard style with a Buddhist temple on the grounds. We past the temple on our way out that first night and sometime later on our way back in.