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Lijiang – Lugu Lake (Day 3)

We woke up at 7am, checked out of our room and left our baggage at the inn while we embarked on our overnight trip to Lugu Lake. Jenny helped us to book our 8.30am bus tickets (CNY 120 return trip) which did not come with pre-allocated seats.

Being the glutton I am, I couldn’t resist grabbing some breakfast while we were waiting for the bus. While I was shopping for breakfast the bus came and we ended up seated all the way at the back of the bus ‘cos everyone else were already on board =( I swore we would get front seats on our return trip the next day (and we did).

It was a 7 hours long bumpy bus ride along the scenic mountainous roads to Lugu Lake – the driver joked that we were getting a free massage along with our bus tickets.

On the way to Lugu Lake

The bus stopped for lunch at a family-run restaurant in the countryside enroute to Lugu Lake – it was an interesting experience – there were no menus, no waitstaff, no order-taker… customers walked straight into the kitchen and yelled their orders out to the cook or his assistant based on the raw ingredients available (one can yell out any combination of veggie or meat dishes and the cook will fry it accordingly). No such thing as first come first served or “I ordered that first” – once a dish is ready, the cook’s assistant would hand the dish over to the first person who sticks his/her hand out for it. Being inexperienced, the only two dishes I could think of were “stir-fried mushrooms with pork” and “tomatoes with fried egg”. After a couple of times of being slow in grabbing my dish of tomatoes with fried egg  from the assistant, I decided to “do as the Romans do in Rome” – forget about being polite… and we got our food promptly.

A lady would make her rounds at the dining area to collect payment – apparently there are only 2 prices for the dishes – either vegetarian (CNY 10) or meat (CNY 20) dishes. Prices were steep for a place like that but I guess we had no choice since it was the only place to get food. Actually the food tasted quite OK.

I went to the washroom after lunch… they’ve got proper doors there but the toilet bowl was just a hole in the floorboard and waste material gets “recycled” immediately as fertilizer for the vegetables being grown on the farmland… I guess that was where the veggies for our lunch came from… ugh.

After lunch we continued with our journey. We arrived at Lugu Lake slightly after 3pm after a 30 minutes delay when our bus broke down and the driver had to fix it. Luckily it wasn’t a big problem otherwise we could have been stuck in the middle of nowhere. We paid CNY 80 each for admission tickets to the Lugu Lake area (I have to grumble again that admission tickets in China aren’t cheap).

We first went to a scenic lookout where we took photos of the lake. Afterwhich the driver took us to a place where we paid CNY 30 each for a boat ride to a small island in the middle of the lake. It was quite dumb and a waste of time and money actually – there wasn’t much to see on the island except a small temple and we were done “exploring” the island in 15 minutes and got back on the boat. The boat rowers tried to persuade us to part with more money for a longer ride out on the lake but we flatly refused. We had a better rowboat experience in Tam Coc, Vietnam.

View of Lugu Lake

Boating on Lugu Lake

Lugu Lake has 2 villages which are popular with tourists – Luoshui and Lige. Luoshui village is where the bigger guesthouses catering to tour groups are located, while Lige is a smaller place (about 500 metres long perhaps) with around a dozen inns and restaurants. While it still looks pretty quaint now, Lugu Lake is fast developing as a tourist hotspot and an airport is currently being constructed. I can picture Lugu Lake becoming much like touristy Lijiang in a few years’ time.

We arrived in Lige at about 5pm and immediately walked over to the youth hostel we wanted to stay at but it was full… so we headed quickly to the next one on our list and asked for a room facing the lake. We were lucky – there was only 1 room left and the receptionist asked if we wanted to view the room first – I said “No, we’ll take it!” because I was afraid somebody else would put their money down on it first if we wasted time viewing the room. Lucky I did that because a few seconds later another couple asked for the same room.

Our room balcony had a view of Lige Village and Lugu Lake

Dinner is being skewered

Our room was really decent and cheap (CNY 200) for a room with private bathroom and a lake view. There was a balcony with tables and chairs for us to relax in. By the time we settled down in the room my stomach was growling for the BBQ suckling pig which was being roasted right beside the hostel. We went down and got ourselves a 1/8 of a pig(let), a fish, potatoes, brinjal and Pepsi for just CNY 100. The food was so delicious we wanted to order more but the wait time was so long we got tired of waiting so we paid up and left.  I think that was the best meal we had in our 16 days in China.

BBQ Dinner at Lugu Lake

At about 3000m above sea level, the temperature in Lugu Lake was a little colder than Lijiang. It was still warm in the daytime but I think it was about maybe 15 degrees celcius or so at night. I had a mild headache initially I suppose due to the altitude but it got better after dinner.

After dinner we went back up to our room to rest for a while before heading out again to join in a campfire performance (CNY 20 per person). PY joined in the dancing for a while. It was over by 10pm and we went back to our room to rest as there was nothing else to do and we had to wake up at 5.30am the next day for a short boating trip to see the sunrise.