Arrival to Shangri la

Day 171

Shangri-La

We successfully boarded to the plane and arrived to Shangri La. China Eastern gave us a paper where they confirm that the flight was delayed for 1 day (for insurance company) and told us that compensation will be 400 Yuan (40 Euros). Since Shangri la is a small city and there is no office of China Eastern here, we have decided not to take the money and instead on arrival to Kunming try to get more – let’s see if we succeed :D

After arrival to Shangri la we kept arguing to the airport workers and did not obtain anything useful. Instead, we missed the airport bus and since there only 2 flights per day in this airport, nobody was coming for us! :D

We asked airport workers call for taxi and in 15 minutes we were on the way to Shangri la city center.

20 Yuan for the taxi (2 euro) and we are in the center. While the guys were sitting with the bags I have checked couple of hotels – all were in a good condition and really cheap, 70-80 Yuan (7-8 euro). When I finally chose one, a lady walking on the street said that she is staying in a really nice place just for 40 Yuan.

Indeed the guesthouse was really nice, new rooms with bathroom, wireless internet, hot water, TV and even electric blankets (in Shangri la was colder then in Lhasa, can you believe it!)

For 50 Yuan we got better rooms and were pretty satisfied.

We walked a bit around the old center, had some barbeque in the main square (1 bbq stick – for 1-2 Yuan (10-20 euro cents), yummy!!!

Later we had a curious incident. There is an old house just in the middle of the main street, called “The house of Abu”. We entered the gate and soon Abu himself, an old Chinese man, called us to go upstairs where he showed us his photo album and told that this house is 400 years old.

Tommy, was telling what a nice man Abu is and it seemed so.

Then Abu invited us inside the house, just a small room with bed and showed us an icon which he said was 400 years old too. The altar was covered with money coupons, Euro, Yuan, Dollars, 10 -20 banknotes. In the end of his speech he said that we should help him to maintain 400 years old altar and asked for donation. When we gave him little money – 5 and 10 Yuan, he was carefully studying what kind of money we left and asking if everybody has paid hahaha Welcome to China!!

Besides that, Shangri la seemed to be a really nice and cozy old town....