We woke up at 5.30am in the morning in time to join a sunrise watching tour at 6am. We each paid CNY 10 for a boat ride out to a tiny little island in the middle of the lake where we watched the sun rise and took photos. Thereafter we returned to Lige village to have a breakfast of noodles and buckwheat pancakes. The noodles were not so good but the pancakes were awesome.

After breakfast and a short rest in our room, we checked out and walked towards the meeting point for our ride back to Lijiang. Our driver was there, without the bus. We were told that due to road works, buses were unable to enter the village and we had to walk up a very steep hill to where the bus was parked. It was a 30 minutes hike under the scorching sun at high altitude so you can imagine how tired we were when we finally reached. There were already about a dozen people waiting outside our bus and we feared that we’d end up sitting right at the back again. Fortunately we managed to get seats near the front this time. It was another 7 hours ride back to Lijiang with a lunch stop at the same place where we stopped the previous day. Oh, there was an additional stop at a “tourist shop” selling local produce and herbs.

We arrived in Lijiang in the late afternoon and we decided to head to the Public Security Bureau to apply for our visa extension. Singaporeans can enter China for up to 15 days without visa, but due to my oversight I planned a trip for 16 days and we forgot to apply for our visas ahead of our trip… so we had to apply while in China. Anyway, the taxi driver took us to the wrong place – it turned out that the PSB had just moved to a new location way out in the suburbs a few days before. We arrived at the new PSB 10 minutes before closing time but were told (contrary to what we understood from online forums) that visa extensions required 5 working days to complete. We pleaded with the officer on duty but to no avail. She did however told us that the PSB in Shangri-la would be able to process extensions on the spot…. we’d have to try when we arrive in Shangri-la tomorrow.

We checked back into the inn and spent the evening hanging around town, window shopping and surfing the net back at the inn. Our driver from Shangri-la actually drove all the way over to Lijiang and stayed overnight at our inn at his own expense so that he could drive us to Shangri-la the next day. This driver, Lodzoh, a Tibetan guy in his fifties was recommended to us by the one we originally contacted as the latter was busy and could not take us around. We chatted with him for a while about the itinerary then went back to our room to pack our luggage. We highly recommend this driver who is a very interesting character and one of the nicest persons we ever met – more about him in the next installment of this trip report…

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