China: Day 2, Part 2 - On Discovering New Food

He was a bold man who first ate an oyster. - Jonathan Swift.

Sitting in an air-conditioned bus, and watching the beautiful Yunnan countryside pass by us, we were struck by two very pertinent questions:

1. Where were the bad roads and crowded places the western backpackers blog about?
2. And where the hell have the Chinese hidden their poor people?

The Gaokuai buses we traveled in were large and comfortable. Costing around 100 yuan a ticket, they were worth the money. The bus ride was smooth, as smooth as a bus ride can possibly be. Dustbins placed at regular intervals and mineral water provided to us by a polite driver in uniform. The sunset compelled P to collapse into her habitual state of unconsciousness, while I found myself watching Chinese films without subtitles.

Our first bathroom break was when we finally had out first taste of true Chinese food, and Chinese toilets. One was pleasant, the other not so much. We stared in awe at the efficiency of the Chinese to utilize every part of an animal. It was the same ruthlessness that we saw on the roads and the cities, and building the Three Gorges Dam. Beaks, wings, claws, necks, all fried and ready to be dipped in spices. Costing a couple of yuan a piece, this was to be our first foray into tasty Chinese territory.

Now, not knowing Mandarin made lives a little scary out there, but more importantly we would have absolutely no idea what we were eating. Our food stories would never have names, just vague descriptions. But on a positive note, we would be forced to never judge a food by its name and ingredients, thus theoretically making us a little more adventurous.

So we packed up steamed dumplings stuffed with strange meat (probably duck) for the rest of the journey, and ate grilled sausages dipped in some spicy brown powder. The powder had a rather unique smell, a smell that I would soon associate with China, a smell that seemed to pervade even my sweat glands and bathrooms.

We got back into the bus for another few hours of journey through darkness. I watched a Jet Li film with pretty visuals, over-exaggerated action sequences, and a bad storyline. Straining my eyes to read the miniscule English subtitles, I sat nervously in the bus, waiting for Dali to arrive. I didn't want to be stuck in a situation where we missed out Dali and found ourselves in a strange Chinese town, in the middle of the night, with no Mandarin on our tongues, a wallet full of yuans and 4 pieces of heavy luggage. Luckily, my imagination would be the most dangerous part of the entire trip.

Dali was the last stop for the bus and we quietly found a moderately over-priced taxi that took us to Dali Old Town, and dropped us at the hotel. At 8pm, we drove through empty roads. Many half-shut eateries and a dozen dancing Chinese later, we got to the Old Town. The town seemed to shut down pretty early. The only store we saw open was the Adult Store.

The kind taxi driver chose to not scam us, and when lost called helpline numbers, and was able to drop us at the nice Dali Regent Hotel. We had a overpriced dinner at the only open eatery around us, which was the hotel restaurant. We made our next discoveries at the end of our dinner -  the Chinese seem unable to grasp the concept of a tip, and no hotel staff seemed to know English, something they were rather apologetic about.

And so we retired to bed in our rather comfortable rooms to wake up to Dali Old Town. It had been about 20 hours of traveling at this point. We needed the rest.