Hello David,
As agreed, here are a few debrief notes on our recent trip to Yunnan. Overall, we were delighted with the trip and with your services! You were incredibly quick to prepare a proposal for us and very flexible about the content of the trip and the types of hotels. You can tell the team really knows the region well. The result matched our expectations.
In a little more detail:
- Payment methods: WeChat Pay and Alipay only rarely work with a non-Chinese bank account. And some shops don’t accept cash (they don’t have change…). So you need to bring cash for meals and other expenses. I think this is important to mention so travellers don’t end up in tricky situations.
- Xizhou: the hotel is superb, but there’s a real noise problem from the works in the rice fields around the hotel, which continue at night and on Sundays. A small detail, but you should also be aware that from early morning the rice fields are invaded by young Chinese people taking Instagram-style photos. Funny to watch, but a bit tiring…
- Shangri-La: there are major works in front of the Tibetan monastery, and the lake is gone, replaced by a building site of mostly black earth. Not a big deal, but the view of the monastery isn’t as beautiful as in the photos where it’s reflected in the small lake.
- Tiger Leaping Gorge: we had lunch at a guesthouse just below the Tea Horse Guesthouse, a superb place where we were the only guests. We ate very well, and it was cheap. It would certainly be great to stay there too (small individual wooden bungalows and a pool).
- We really liked the Jade Snow Inn guesthouse. Very simple, but the owner, who speaks good English, gave us a warm welcome. And a good dinner on the terrace, with an incredible view of the mountain.
- Wumu: definitely our favourite stop! The guesthouse is great, and the view is incredible. Just so you know, much of the road there and back is being rebuilt (for a few more months, I think), and it takes an hour to cover about 15 km. Not a problem as such, just a bit tiring.
- Lijiang: pretty and well preserved, but really too crowded and too full of shops for our taste. The park is pleasant but not essential. So we could have skipped this stop and spent more time in Shuhe, which is a bit “calmer” and really nice. Explore it very early in the morning, before the tourist coaches (which arrive early).
- The Bivou hotel is very good, and being so close to the vegetable gardens is really lovely.
Those are my notes!
See you soon!
Sophie