Free camping in China! Camping next to a local's shop!

Hello again to our fellow steemians! In our last post we hitchhiked to Dali and explored this beautiful town before getting rained in for many days. Follow us on the next part of our hitchhiking journey from Thailand to Europe!

After spending five days in Dali, it was time to move onto our next destination which at this point was still a little unclear. We had the intention of getting to Chengdu, 1000 km north of Dali but realised we wouldn't be making it in one day. We decided that we should try to make it to Liangshan, 580 km from Dali.

We walked down to the main road heading out of Old Dali and into 'New' Dali where we proceeded to wait for a rather long time. There were plenty of cars passing but almost none stopped and the ones that did were only going a kilometre or two or just couldn't understand what we were doing!

Eventually we got picked up by a young guy that understood what we were doing and even drove us to the toll booth by the entrance to the motorway! Perfect! This would allow us to cover some good distance as the motorways in China are very well built and getting rides along the motorways in petrol stations turns out to be pretty effective.

After a short wait at the toll booth we were picked up by a guy in a brand new Audi SUV! This had to be one of the nicest cars we had been in so far on this journey! It was very luxurious indeed! As we were driving the heavens opened and it started to tip it down! Just want we needed... After about an hour our lovely driver dropped us off at a roadside cafe/restaurant and pointed us in the right direction. As always our communication with the driver was rather limited and body language can only go so far, but he was a nice guy nonetheless.

We had a little snack and toilet break and worked out which way we needed to go in order to get our next ride. We realised that we would have to cross the motorway but weren't sure how to do so but just then a friendly guy showed that there was actually an underpass for pedestrians.

Following Maps.me we walked through this rather depressing looking town which was extremely muddy and it felt like the whole place was under construction. We had to walk a good three or four kilometres in order to make it to a reasonable hitchhiking spot.

It was already starting to get a little late by this point and we realised that we wouldn't be making it to Lianshang in one day so we started thinking about where we could spend our first night wild camping in China. In this spot we had to wait for a very long time to get a ride but eventually a really nice young guy picked us up and on the way we explained that we wanted to find a nice camping spot for the night. Keep in mind that all of the conversation was through an app, but he understood what we needed and told us that he knew the perfect place.

We stopped in a small town where we were planning on buying some extra supplies for dinner and also so we could buy some water. Our driver stopped outside of a bakery and told Alex to come inside with him. He then proceeded to grab lots of bags of filled bread buns and paid for all of them within a few seconds before Alex even saw what was happening!
That was dinner and breakfast sorted! He then told us that we need to wait for a few minutes as his friend was going to join us. A few minutes later his friend jumped in the car and we introduced ourselves before we all headed off to the camping spot they had suggested. At this point we had no idea what kind of camping spot this would be but we decided to put all our trust in the lovely guys!

It turned out to be an incredible spot with amazing views of the mountains and a huge waterfall in the distance! There were even new toilets, which turned out to be locked, and a guy selling cold noodle dishes! There were even some goats around!

We were so happy that the lovely guys had taken us to this beautiful spot and we kept thanking them and exchanged contact details (we continued to send pictures for many months) before they left. We asked the noodle guy where we could put our tent and he pointed to a spot under the roof next to his shop and even gave us access to his plug sockets! This was amazing and helped us out a lot! Of course we tried his noodles and they were delicious!

Let's just say our first night camping in China wasn't the most comfortable! Having only our cheap foam matresses from Decathlon directly on the concrete wasn't ideal and it was actually pretty chilly too as we were at 1800 metres above sea level.

We got up early the next morning and had a tasty breakfast with our Aeropress coffee and the rest of the bread buns and had some nosey goats coming to look at us! Afterwards we packed up our tent and walked to the road, only 10 metres away and put our bags down ready to head to Lianshang.

After waiting for about 30 minutes with almost no vehicles passing by we managed to get a ride in an ex-ambulance to the next town. This journey turned out to be a hairy one! The driver seemed to be trying to impress us with his skills or he just loved driving rediculously fast! Once again the views were incredible as always!

The driver dropped us off on the far side of the town by the bus station which was perfect as we only had to walk about two kilometres to the entrance of the motorway. Here we didn't have to wait for too long and got picked up by a lovely guy who took us almost all the way to Lianshang but dropped us off at a toll booth without any traffic.

Here we stood for a good 45 minutes before a car passed and we were very lucky when they stopped and said that they were also going to Lianshang! We chucked out bags in the bag of the pick-up and jumped in the back seats. The two guys were very sweet and even stopped in a petrol station to buy us a juice each!

The friendly guys dropped us off at the entrance to the city and we walked a little before realising it was way to far to go by foot so we started waiting by a bus stop without any idea of how the bus system worked in this town! We asked the only other person waiting in line how much the bus cost and which one we should get on and of course we didn't have the right change and when it came to getting on the bus we also found out that we couldn't pay as they didn't give change! The nice chap offered to pay for us (2 RMB each which is about 0.30$) and told us where we should get off.

After arriving we stopped in a cheap looking restaurant and had some of the most amazing dumplings we have ever had and they even came in a delicious stock and only cost around 9 RMB (1.35$)!

We found a nice place to stay for a good price and the room was very comfy and they even had table football for free in the lounge! Brilliant!

We spent the next few days relaxing and exploring this unexpectidly nice city which had an amazing lake and ecosystem just outside the centre and fairly close to where we were staying! It was a really nice place to spend a few days soaking up the atmosphere and trying out lots of tasty food!

We really enjoyed our night of free camping in China and are continuing to find the people incredibly friendly and hospitable and of course, the food is amazing!

If you would like to watch our vlog from this post check it here.

If you are interested in our route you can find it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dKeTjIFM0cgSP2Wefp8L3ZvOgTE&usp=sharing

Thanks again everyone for reading and we hope you enjoyed this post and of course, if you have any questions please feel free to ask! Have a great day!