A Day in Dali China | Travel

Good morning, it's a beautiful day in Dali and today we are going to the old town to ride some bikes. Yes, we have to go find a bike rental place but before that we're getting some fruit. It's so interesting because we're staying or across the highway from the old town and I guess this is a lot of farmland but it's just now being built up and so there's all these new concrete structures and it's like I don't know I like to call it like the IKEA version of the old town it's like old and new meet this modern. This sounds silly but I feel like I'm walking through a cartoon movie Mulan. I don't know why we have not experienced this anywhere else but like this part of China loves golden retrievers. We have seen so many. Okay we got our bikes. So we're riding down the hill it's crazy and I'm just waiting for this thunderstorm that's above us that keeps like passing and they'll come back to downpour on us. We're not prepared as you can hear the wind behind us. It's pretty intense. End of the road. We made it. We are here at this little marina. It's not much of a marina compared to what I was expecting but it definitely has a lot of old guys fishing which is what I wanted. It's very interesting it's like this is the water and they cleared all this land there's like houses backing up to this and we're riding on debris which used to be houses. Okay so I don't know if we have enough time but we decided we're going on that ferry across the water. So we decided not to go on the ferry just because it leaves 40 minutes from now and that would take a little bit too much time. We have to have our bikes back by 8 p.m. It's mine fine pecan. It's really good. Okay. Interesting measuring system. I like it. Okay. Good? A little. Okay we're going on a hike tomorrow so we might be good. Test. So we just bought I would guess more than a pound of almonds for $30 which is what Zach? $5. $5. This would cost you like $15 back home. And these are so good. They're fresh and they're salted. Some progress. This truck was half full when we first came. Fire burning in my chest because we just had to like ride up this mountain. Trying to beat rush hour. Zach's fine. I'm not. But now we're walking our bikes. We made it back to the old city. We're about to return them. We're hiking tomorrow so I didn't want to kill my legs so we're walking. So we have returned our bikes and now we're really hungry and so we're going to go find more soup, noodles, beef spicy beef noodle soup and more chicken soup. So excited. Coolest noodle cart ever. We got our first baba. It's warm. It's pretty much just fried savory dough. There's like this sweet sauce inside and there's a lot of it. And it is so good. Most of the roots that are actually old roots have like grass and sometimes trees growing on them. Like I said, dirt blew on some seeds got thrown on here and now full life on top of the roof. We came up to this and it looks like dirt. I was like, there's no way. We found our rooftop. So I found this place on Apple Maps. I was just looking through the menu and it looked really really good. And we're here. We ordered and it was like really smooth and now we're on the rooftop and it is beautiful. And I'm just very happy right now. Yum. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I think this might be Zach's. It's like chicken. There's a lot going on here. Okay, so first this broth. Tastes like, the best way I can describe it is the shell of a peanut. Like super salty and it's not bad. It actually is very unique. Then there's a little bit of spice. Then the noodle is like compact rice if you were to just push it together. It tastes so good and so chewy. Cucumbers, first of all, are always amazing. This marinade is like serious garlic. Salt, some chili, some vinegar. Thank you. This is so good. It's a complicated flavor. Tastes like rice. But not salted and not sweet and not rice. It tastes like cooked rice, but it's yellow. Thank you. We also got the spicy beef. They didn't give us any spoons. I think this is a slurping situation. It's really, really good. The noodles, I feel like they're wheat noodles instead of rice noodles. They usually don't have much flavor. These have a lot of flavor on their own. The broth is really beefy, but it's light. It's not heavy. The beef itself is very, very tender. It has a really great spiced flavor, but it's not spicy. As you can see, it's so good. This is exactly what I need after the bike day. Tomorrow, we're going to hike I don't even know how long. Is it 10 miles? Maybe. 10 miles. We made it to the main street. The nightlife here is crazy. I just want to show you a glimpse of each of the shops. That's what we're going to try and do here. Love this downtown. We're about to make it to the crazy part. You can see behind us the dancers. I think we're going to watch them every night. How long are we watching tonight? At least a half hour. Today was awesome. The bike ride was really good. You can get out and see everything and exercise and see the lake. Tomorrow's hike is going to be amazing. It might kill us, but okay. One, two, three.