Today I took another bus, about 3-4 hours away, higher up into the mountains to the city of Lijiang. It is another ancient capital city, like Dali. From the bus station, I read I could take bus 11 to a supermarket to get to the old town area. It was kind of crazy because I didn’t know the exact name and didn’t know for sure where to get off, but I used my senses and all the information I had and got near the area I wanted. I wasn’t sure where I was on my map though.
I noticed a sign for MCA Hotel, which was mentioned in WikiTravel to have free wireless Internet, so I walked there. It was pretty empty. I was in a big dorm room and I was the only guest there. There was another section of the dorm room for employees of the hotel. There was also a broken shower. The shower head fell off and there was garbage on the floor. I decided to skip taking showers while I was there.
I spent the last hour of daylight looking around the old city. The main streets were like shopping malls. There must have been 1000 shops in the old city area. Some parts of the city look really nice though. I walked up a hill and got a good view of it all.