Dali Honeymoon Trip

Number of days：6 days
Time: April
Average cost: 5,000 yuan
With whom: husband and wife
Tour kinds: self-driving, independent travel, budget travel, saving money
Updated: 2023.06.17

Preliminary Preparations

Make sure you are prepared for sun protection! ! ! ! !

A wide-brimmed hat, preferably one that covers your neck as well, otherwise the back of your neck won’t be covered and will get sunburned too. Also, sunglasses, ice sleeves, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, a water bottle, and a parasol.

I went there in April, and the temperature fluctuated greatly. It was very cold in the morning and evening, and the wind was very strong. A thick coat was needed to withstand it. It was very hot at noon, so a short-sleeved shirt would be enough.

Booking a hotel

The earlier you book a hotel, the cheaper it is. If you want to experience Dali's local customs and folk customs up close, you should book a homestay. The prices here are very complicated, and they fluctuate greatly with time. We booked it two months in advance, and the room rate was around 200 yuan. Later, when we checked in, the prices of those homestays had increased several times, with the most expensive one being over 800 yuan a night. We wanted to take our time this time, so we stayed in a different hotel each day, experiencing various room types, including sunrise rooms, sea view and sunset rooms, classic Bai ethnic minority residential buildings, and modern light luxury rooms. We also stayed in Lijiang Old Town for one night.

Dali is a city surrounded by Erhai Lake. If you want to watch the sunrise, stay on the west side of Erhai Lake with your back to Cangshan Mountain. If you want to watch the sunset, stay on the east side of Erhai Lake, facing Cangshan Mountain.

Sunrise Room: No need to get up early and rush to the crowded internet-famous spots. Just make a cup of tea in the room, open the curtains, and watch the sun slowly rise. The birds are perched on the branches, and you can enjoy this rare beauty together. Compared with my previous busy and anxious work, I suddenly feel that I am so luxurious now, especially when this kind of comfort can be satisfied for less than 200 yuan. It is really relaxing.

I booked a sunset room in Shuanglang Ancient Town, a food street, and a line of art shops near Erhai Lake. Many young ladies were taking pictures. We were embarrassed to grab a seat, so we bought a bunch of snacks and took them back to the hotel to eat. With the sound of the waves, we watched the sun slowly set. This is a beautiful view that you can enjoy for 180 yuan. This is a light luxury modern house in the center of Dali City. The landlady is so beautiful. She bought a duplex of more than 500 square meters in the city center and decorated it into a homestay. The interior decoration is fully electronic. There is a pond as soon as the door opens, and she also raises a lot of fish. There is also a game room on the roof. It is very bourgeois. The rent wasn't expensive. She also had a similar apartment next door where she lived with her family. She came over in the evenings to have tea and chat with us. A young woman without the pressures of life seems to have defied the ravages of time and looks incredibly young. Transportation: We hired a small car. The driver and the car were charged 350 yuan per day, with no additional charges. We set our own schedules, and the trip took eight hours. The driver was local and would be home for dinner by 7 p.m. at the latest, acting as a sort of tour guide, taking us to many less-visited attractions. Food: We went hunting out of season, so we only had frozen mushrooms, which were quite expensive. We had rolled Erh Cake in the morning, which seemed to be made by pounding the rice continuously, and then rolling some ingredients to eat. The driver took us to eat two kinds of Erh Cake, one was hand-beaten and the other was pressed by a machine. The taste was really different. The one kneaded by hand would be more elastic, but seeing that he was kneading it with his bare hands without gloves, and then adding some vegetables, and then handed it to me directly without heating, it had a unique flavor.

Grilled milk fan is really delicious, and it is available in every place, ranging from 8 to 12 yuan. The charcoal grilled ones are better and more fragrant than the electric grilled ones.

It was my first time to eat cold pine needle salad, the taste was amazing, and there was also crispy vegetarian chicken. Yunnan barbecue: a blend of northern and southern flavors. The driver took us to Dali home-style cuisine. I happened to catch the market and bought a huge box of blueberries bigger than a fingernail for only 20 yuan. They were quite sweet, and the driver thought it was worth it.

Our first stop was a windy photoshoot location: the ancient Tea Horse Village. It was full of ancient charm and charm. The difference wasn't too big, it's the difference between ideal and reality.

The entrance to the courtyard where the heroine lives

The long path is lined with small shops on both sides, selling some seemingly handmade products, small plastic ornaments, jewelry woven from rattan branches, or some Yunnan specialty fruits. Passing by you on the road are not only tourists, but also tall and mighty horses, with body fragrance wafting from time to time, setting mines.

Then it was time for dinner and we wanted to go to Chongsheng Temple for vegetarian food. Later, the driver said that in fact, the vegetarian food was almost the same. If we went to a big temple to eat at dinner time, we might have to queue for a long time. In the end, we had vegetarian food in another small temple in Cangshan. When we entered the temple, it was the first time I knew that succulents could be used as garden plants for decoration. There were all kinds of succulents of different sizes, colorful, with small thorns. There was a kind of beauty that I dared not touch~

I think the vegetarian food in the temple tasted okay, but our driver said he couldn't get used to it. He lined up with a big bowl and used WeChat to scan the QR code on the wall to pay. It was 10 yuan per person. 5 staff members took turns to scoop a spoonful of vegetables into your bowl. The dishes were all a little spicy, but I couldn't taste it. My husband is from Guangzhou and he said it was a little spicy. After you've filled your meal, find a seat and start eating. There are plenty of seats around the courtyard. After you finish eating, you can take your bowls to the kitchen, where volunteers will clean up. When you're queuing, make sure you know whether the end of the line is the cafeteria or the coffee shop. There's a small coffee shop inside the temple without a sign, and some people missed their meal time because they lined up in the wrong line.

We went to Chongsheng Temple in the afternoon. Guangzhou ID cards are exempt from entrance fees. It seems that ID cards from several other cities are also exempt. I don’t know why, but you can get in by showing your ID card to the ticket inspector. We didn’t want to walk, so we bought a round-trip tour bus, which made it easier to walk around. I heard that this temple is very spiritual. My husband even bought a lottery ticket and went in to scratch it, that’s it~~~

Then we went to Dali Ancient Town in the evening. Forgive me, a country bumpkin who has hardly been to night markets, but the ancient town of Dali shocked me. It turns out that the places with wind in TV dramas are still real places. The bars are really one after another, separated by a wall. A guitarist and a singer are the backing singers of a bar. In the bigger bars, you can see a row of young ladies dancing on the tables outside. The singers inside can also see what is happening outside and solicit customers while singing.

The next day we went to Cangshan. We were very lucky. There was no wind that day. The driver said it would be very cold up there. We each rented a cotton jacket, but later we found out that we didn’t need it. We kept climbing the mountain and were super tired. It seemed that this was the highest cable car in China. After getting on it, we still had to climb for half an hour to reach the top.

We had no choice but to return. Unwilling to go up so hard and not see anything, we took another route to see some wildlife. But then we saw nothing, so we had to go back down the mountain.

Then we went to Xi Village to see the rice fields. It was a great place to find an open-air cafe to sit for a day and watch the tourists coming and going in the rice fields. The staff turned on the loudspeaker and shouted around them, "I see you, it's your little sister, ignore the rice fields." At first I thought it was directed at me, but after listening for a long time, I found out it was playing on a loop, hahahaha