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Dali, China
25° 42' N 100° 11' E
Sep 20, 2005 03:57
Distance 266km

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Other entries in Dali

Caffeine club - stoned stupor

Text written in: English

We arrived in Dali at 6am to heavy drizzle and got a taxi direct to a hotel that we had a flyer for already. The MCA hostel is costing us 1.40GBP per night for a double bed each, free internet, free laundry, restaurant and swimming pool.  I think i could get used to this!  As we were settling into our room, the hotels pet dog came into to greet us and alarmingly it looks like it has udders:  It is now affectionately called the dogcow. We were sharing our room with just one other person at this time - a middle aged French woman who was cycling around the world!!

Around midday, we ventured out for a walk into Dali town centre to egt some fodder and view some sites.  This place is so chilled out and cool.  Probably something to do with the abundence of hash that is growing in the nearby mountains.  The city is really picturesque with its charming little streets, each lined with a small waterway that i think might be something to do with irrigation. 

We stopped for lunch at about 1pm at a place called the caffeine club which was run by an Aussie guy called Dan.  The thai red curry went down a treat and the beers were flowing, so we ended up staying for 7 hours!!  About half way through this, they started passing around numerous joints, and being a non-smoker, I was absolutely wrecked in next to no time, giggling my tits off at the smallest of things.  With smoking weed, i can go one or two ways, one is to get uncontrollable giggles and the other being serious paranoia.  Like the time at uni when i was searching under my bed and in my drawers because i could have sworn there was a goblin in the room!!

We also met a cool chinese guy called Mr Xi in the caffeine club and decided to go on one of his tours in a couple of days time, then he insisted we should go back to his house for dinner and get wrecked again!  There really isnt anything else to do here...

We eventually left the caffeine club at about 8pm and made our way to another bar we had been recommended called Bad Monkey, with the obvious stop on the way to scoff copious amounts of street food as we had the munchies pretty bad.  Managed to resist eating barbequed chicken feet and entrails though.

Finally we stunbled across Bad Monkey, and immediately knew we wouldnt last much longer as you could smell the weed from about a hundred metres away and the owner was an English guy with arse length dreads.  We only lasted about half an hour in this place as the drinking and smoking had completely knackered us out, but we did get some amusement froma  random Chinese guy who celebrated when he bought a carton of milk....made sense at the time!!  When we left Bad Monkey we were immediately approached by a middle aged chinese woman trying to sell us hash, and then opium when we said we didnt want any!  This place is just plain weird.

In total, we had 39 beers, 6 meals and shed loads of street food, and it didnt come to more than 23 quid.  Result.

We had a slow walk home back through the town and Alex was freaking out as he had paranoia and there were Chinese soldiers marching down the street, who he thought were coming to get him...very amusing at the time.