Day 3 : Tea at the Lijiang Old Town (1)...

Day 3: 28th June 2011

We spent almost the whole afternoon at the Yushui Park - that area where the Dragon Pool Park and Dongba Museum were - after which we moved on to visit the Old City of Lijiang. Our hotel, the Chateau Le Act was located at the South Gate of the Old City. Our guide drove us to the North Gate of the Old Town and we planned to spend the rest of the day walking through the Old City which has been designated a "Unesco Heritage Site".

First stop was at a traditional tea-house....

the photographs above were representative of what the whole

of the Lijiang Old City looked like.....

all the old shops have been restored to their original form

and today housed mostly shops selling tourist merchandises,

restaurants or have been turned into Inns and hotels....

the girl in the centre is Ms Beautiful Goose, our Naxi tour-guide

to her right is our travelling companion, Siti....

As we were all quite tired and somewhat thirsty, Ms Beautiful Goose took us to an old family run tea-house near the North Gate of the old city. Tea is an important commodity of Yunnan. We had visited one tea-house in Kunming - the Dr Tea Teahouse - and had listened to a comprehensive lecture about the different types and grades of tea produced in Yunnan besides having had a tea-tasting session after which we all had also bought a range of teas to take home. So we were already familiar with this round of tea-ceremony and had ready questions to the son of the family who owned this tea shop who gave a round of tea-tasting with several different types of teas at the shop.

We ended up buying some more teas of different types and grades. Our impression was that the teas in Kunming were cheaper - probably because Lijiang is a very 'touristy' destination and things are more 'pricey'....

the young son of this tea-shop family was gentle and polite

and offered us several different types and grades of teas...

the Malaysian tourist with our tea-boy and Ms Beautiful Goose....