One thing I miss about our trips to South Korea and Japan are the English maps and guides that are often found in their places of interest and attractions. In comparison I haven’t been able to find English brochures or info pamplets for the places we’ve been visiting in Yunnan so far. Perhaps it’s a situation where the domestic tourism market is so large in China that they finally don’t need international tourists to get by. Or maybe those English brochures are somewhere in each place and I just haven’t been able to find them.
In any case, the next place we visited was Blue Moon Valley and Baishui River. Or at least, I think – and I might be very wrong – that these were indeed the places we visited. According to web sites, the valley has four lakes: Yuye Lake (玉液湖), Jingtan Lake (镜潭湖), Blue Moon Lake (蓝月湖), and Tingtao Lake (听涛湖): and problem #1: I couldn’t tell which was which! Still, the scenery was beautiful, with the calm tuquoise waters of each lake offering transparency that I’ve only last seen a few months ago at Taisho-Ike pond. The several cascading waterfalls were also beautiful, and clearly also a very popular spot for couples to have their wedding photos taken: we counted at least a dozen couples having their pictures taken. I *think* Baishui River is the river that interconnects the four lakes through the valley.
Continued in the next post!