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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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

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.

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