Back-slacking Not Backpacking.

I needed a break from my blisters and Doug needed a break from doctoring my blisters so we are spending not one but two nights in Chuxiong. Our first hotel choice flat out denied us entry. In fact, they refused to even look at us so we wandered around until we found our current digs. If you ever cone to China, don’t expect anyone to speak any English aside from hello and bye-bye. We should have worked harder at learning Mandarin (sorry Vivian) because it took us 45 minutes to check into our hotel. Doug had to use google translate to scan text off of their computer before we could figure out what info they needed.
If I were asked to recommend two towns to visit based on what we’ve seen so far I would recommend Ancient Dali and Chuxiong. They are very similar but have the most to offer a tourist. Chuxiong has a vibrant night-life (karaoke can be heard through our closed windows), lots of shopping and dining. We just ate some really good fried baby potatoes so we disn’t have to take our anti-malaria meds on an empty stomach. The street food here is amazing.
We got here mid-day and so far it’s been great. A clean room and AC! The only snag was our struggle to check-in. Speaking of check-in— er, I mean chicken. Tomorrow I’m gonna try to get Doug to eat a roasted chicken foot. I already got him to eat fried scorpions. If he’s game, I’ll post the pic tomorrow!