Old Dali, Alleys and the Valley

The last couple days I've been wandering the stone streets of Old Dali, marveling at the old Chinese architecture inside the city walls. Everything is pleasantly clean and immaculate here. It's actually a great place to relax; the main streets are full of Chinese tourists but once you wander off them and into the lower key areas you hardly see anyone. The main streets can be kind of humorous too. This was the first time that women, instead of men, run up to me offering weed or hash. The hostel I'm in is a nice refuge, it has an enclosed courtyard with benches where you can chill out and read a book. It's also a big artist colony. The manager here makes quite the effort to attract local and foreign artists, and apparently if you play music here, you stay for free, which makes me wish I knew how to play guitar. They threw a huge buffet bbq last night: thirty five yuan (roughly $5.15) for a plate and a beer. Speaking of food, this place is awesome for it. Yesterday I ate a plate of dumplings (same thing as momo's, which I love btw) for four and a half yuan (roughly $0.66), and today had a bowl of noodle soup and tea for five yuan (roughly $0.75). And one thing I've learned the hard way today: don't eat noodle soup with a brand new white shirt, I now have little red oil spots all over it. My brand new shirt, oh, the humanity! I rented a bike (a real mountains bike!) and rode down the valley to the lake and around some village alleys today, hung out with an old Chinese man for a bit, and am now feeling good from the first dose of good exercise in quite a while. Tomorrow I'm going to hike up into the mountains here to go see some hillside temples and hopefully get a killer view of Dali and the valley.