We arrived at the fifth stage of my journey as a digital nomad, the one that for me is the most exciting: China!
We took a plane from Chiang Mai that took us directly to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province, in southern China on the border with Laos and Vietnam.
The trip went smoothly: only an hour and a half of flight but the emotion of returning to the country of the dragon after so many years kept me awake all night! I couldn't stop imagining what Kunming would be like, the changes and modernizations that China has experienced in the last 10 years... And in fact, it has changed a lot!
One of the things that really left me speechless is that you pay for everything with an app, WeChat Pay or Alipay. Goodbye cash, goodbye debit cards, goodbye ATM lines! Just connect the cards to these apps and paying becomes child's play. In these two weeks we never had to worry about withdrawing money, checking the budget or calculating change.
If you have a smartphone, you're all set!
Another thing that "struck" us (literally) was the cold. We were used to Thailand's 32 degrees Celsius and, suddenly, we found ourselves at 5 degrees! Luckily, however, we had prepared ourselves in Chiang Mai with a crazy shopping spree of heavy clothes: fleeces, double-layered trousers and wool hats.
I'll just tell you that we were covered as if we were about to embark on an expedition to the Himalayas!
Leaving aside the freezing temperatures, Kunming was a wonderful surprise. Its historic centre looks like a theme park, with buildings that tell the story of the many ethnic minorities that inhabit this province.
Our most spectacular trip was to the Stone Forest: a real forest of stones! We got lost in its rocky alleys, admiring the majesty of this surreal place, which is not surprising to us as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
After Kunming, we moved to Lijiang and Dali, two towns that are not so "-ine": Lijiang has more than a million inhabitants! Its historic center, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is enchanting. Imagine small rivers flowing through cobbled alleys, little shops full of Pu'er tea (typical of this area), mouth-watering rose cakes and traditional Chinese architecture that, at night, lights up with lanterns and lights. It felt like a fairy tale.
The next stop in Dali gave us an unforgettable afternoon on Lake Erhai, aboard an electric scooter that seemed to have come out of a cartoon. The view of the lake with the mountains that surround it was one of the most evocative of the trip.
Finally, from here we faced "the journey of hope" to reach the famous rice terraces of Yuanyang, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. And in fact, China is the second country in the world for number of registered UNESCO sites, second only to our beloved Italy. I tell you that the route included 1 train, 1 bus and 1 minivan, for a total of 10 hours of travel!
But it was worth it.
The spectacle that we found in front of us left us speechless: infinite terraces that reflected the sky like mirrors (even if there was fog) made everything even more suggestive. We had the feeling of being in a fairy tale: the mountains, the terraces, the fog that enveloped everything... a landscape that I will never forget.
A small "misadventure" made us laugh a lot: I fell into a pond right in front of the hotel! The surface was covered with an invasive alga that looked like a meadow... and I fell in with all my shoes! The owner's grandmother, who was used to similar scenes, burst out laughing with us and even helped us dry our shoes with a heating device. Only here, in the "factory of the world", can you find such practical and ingenious solutions!
Speaking instead of the digital side, in China you have to go equipped with as many VPNs as possible on your phone and PC. We had downloaded six of them, of which we had already paid a month's subscription for two to make sure that at least one would work.
In China there is the Great Firewall, which means you can't use Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other Western social networks and browsers: they are all censored by the government. But luckily with the VPN we have always managed to work and make weekly calls with our clients. All's well that ends well!
China was not a goodbye, but just a see you later. We have already planned to go back next year, and I can't wait. But in the meantime, our journey continues... next stop, Laos (with a thousand other adventures to tell you about)!
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