FAM-Tour Chronicles 1: Yunnan

For some of you who don’t know, FAM-tour is short for familiarization tour. For this tour, we invited 23 travel agents, photographers, bloggers, and other experts from several western countries to come discover our hidden corner of the world, Yunnan.

Our exclusive partner China Southern Airlines provided the tickets from London and back and the Yunnan Tourism Development Committee covered all the other expenses for this trip.

After months of careful planning and hundreds of emails, we finally met our guests face to face in Kunming.

First we went to see the Dynamic Yunnan Show. Even guests who went in without any high expectations came out enchanted: the dynamic songs, rhythmic drums, traditional dances and colorful costumes from different ethnic groups can delight anyone, young or old.

After a fitful night’s rest, we went to visit Yuantong temple, the largest Buddhist center in Kunming and an oasis of peace and green in a bustling city.

We managed to organize a trip to the Stone Forest in the afternoon. Although there are lots of Chinese tourists taking pictures on the outside, once you get lost in the natural labyrinth inside you are literary alone and you can really experience the magnitude of these natural stone sculptures. You can also climb to the top and have a birds-eye view from above.

In the evening, we had a dinner and meeting with the Yunnan Tourism Development Committee, to introduce Yunnan to all our guests.

The next morning we left for Dali and visited the Three Pagodas of Chongsheng Temple. The Pagodas and temple were first built in the 9^th century and are the symbol of Dali. Later we had some free time to stroll in the ancient town of Dali and try local fried goat cheese.

The next day we woke up early to go to the Xizhou morning market, with thousands of goods, from fresh vegetables to live chicken, traditional clothes to farming tools and herbal medicines. In Zhoucheng we visited a batik workshop, where we could learn how clothes are tied and dyed by hand, using traditional methods and natural indigo dye.

In Lijiang we strolled around the Black Dragon Pool and visited the Dongba culture museum. Unfortunately because of the cloudy weather, we couldn’t glimpse the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. We walked to the hotel through the sinewy back alleys of Lijiang Old Town, where the Yunnan part of our trip came to an end.

In short, this trip in Yunnan was really interesting, but a bit too short, with so many places to visit.

We met a lot of great people and learned a lot from our adventures.