"Clean your shoes, Sir?" Top 5 Page for this destination Dali by Ines28

Dali is not as cozy as Lijiang, but still a very nice place for shopping, eating, relaxing and watching people. There are many cute and cheap guesthouses, the food is not too expensive either and the surrounding mountains ensure a pleasant scenery. The only thing that bothered us a little bit were the street vendors. We met one guy who absolutely wanted to clean our shoes and followed us for about 300 m, the next day we met him again and he even sat down at our table when we stopped at a street cafe. Every few minutes he asked "Clean shoes?" I know we could have put an end to it easily by just letting him clean our shoes, but he was so insistent that it became a question of principle. Also the old women selling some kind of dough thing can be quite pushing, one simple "No" does not suffice, you have to say it at least 15 times before they are willing to leave you alone. Apart from this, we enjoyed our stay in Dali very much, it is just so relaxing!

View from Cangshan Mountain

One thing we did not understand at the beginning was the permanent playing of "Happy birthday to you". We did not know where it came from, until we discovered it was the dustcart informing the people it was coming by, so that they could dispose of their garbage! After a certain time it was impossible to get the song out of our heads, we even still heard it up here at the Cangshan Temple after two hours horse riding!

• Pros:good and inexpensive food and accomodation
• Cons:street vendors
• In a nutshell:Shopping paradise in beautiful scenery