A few days in Shangri-La

I have just returned from LiJiang in China.  Yes, my first response was also "where's that?"  LiJiang is in the Yunnan province of southern China and is next door to the area that inspired the fabled Shangri-La in the story Lost Horizon.  I was invited there to speak at a customer event, sharing experiences of how other customers have used our software.  When the China HP team were asking me to go they said that LiJiang is a very beautiful place.  Picturing the cities of Beijing and Guangzhou in my mind, I thought they were just talking it up, but I was wrong.  It was amazing.  In a valley surrounded by mountains, LiJiang City contains an ancient Old Town which is a world heritage site.  While now very commercialised for tourists with bars, restaurants, hotels and lots of shopping, the traditional buildings curving along flowing streams is just beautiful. 
The conference event was on Friday.  On Saturday morning we had an organised tour (with a 6am start) where we went by bus and cable car up to a meadow with great views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, yaks grazing and lots of tourists.  We then attended a show called Impressions LiJiang which was held in a purpose-built, outdoor arena with the mountain as backdrop.  The show was directed by the man who did the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and involved over 400 performers doing dances and songs to provide "impressions" of the local cultures and history.  It was quite spectacular and colourful. In the afternoon I had more time to explore the old town before starting my journey back to Singapore.  I got home at 4am this morning!