Kunming

China

October 2005
4 days

Gavin wrote:
Also we have left our backpack and wheely suitcase in HK and are travelling around with only 3 small backpacks which is a pleasure after lugging around everything we own, everywhere.
Anyway, we are now in Kunming, which is about 1000km west of hong kong. We managed with lots of pointing and mime to get a train ticket from GuangZhou in mainland china to Kunming in Yunnan province.

We only spent a few hours in GuangZhou but it looks an interesting place, very clean and modern with lots of sky scrapers and parks, well probably check it out on the way back through. Our plan is to travel as far as our route takes us away from Hong Kong (to a place called Lijang, and then work our way back to Hong Kong).

The train journey was 25hrs! and actually very pleasant, we went soft sleeper which meant we were in a cabin with 2 bunk beds, (as appose to hard sleeper wchih i saw when i was exploring the train, and consist of rows and rows of bunk beds 3 tiers high and no real compartments) but we were fortunate to only share our cabin with one chinese girl for about half the journey. We passed through some amazing scenery on the way. The food on the train was pretty nasty, we had dinner but it was horrible - fortunatly thanks to a tip from mum, we brought a couple of pot noodles which kept us going.

Well rested, we arrivided in Kunming and thanks to our lonley planet found some amazing value accomodation in probably the nicest, funkiest room we have stayed in so far, its got a cool sink and the toilet and shower are in separate smoked glass cabinet things, all for under ?0 a night!

We have spent a couple of days exploring Kunming and we are both very impressed with this city, its got skyscrapers and parks and again is very clean, its well planned with cycle lanes alongside all the roads, but the best thing is the atmosphere which is SO chilled out, i dunno how to explain it, its quite quiet, but it seems really subdued, basically its lovely. Weve wandered around and shopped (lorraine bought a funky coat for under a tenner), and seen a 1000 year old temple with loads of terripins and goldfish (lorraine wants me to mention a turtle we watched which was swimming upside down and looked in some distress, then after a while i saw it swim in an erratic cirle and actually flip over - we never knew turtles could do that!) and have also seen a couple of pagodas surrounded by old chinese people playing mahjong (we think). We also bought a load of DVDs to watch on my laptop, they were only 50p each, which is the cheapest so far on our journey.

I have to mention the climate here, Kunming is known as the spring city and during the day it is like a nice english spring with mild sunshine and its a little chilly at night (hence the jacket for Lorraine).

Oh yeah, we are drinking a lot of green tea at the moment which is very nice, we even bought a bag of it from a tea shop, our plastic bag of tea looks like dodgy herbs.

Well today we have a 5hr bus journey to Dali which is a little to the north of Kunming, about halfway to Lijang.

Lorraine wrote:
Then left our luggage in Hong Kong and are travelling light for the next 2 or 3 weeks in China - so no more packing which is so boring and carrying around heavy stuff. Although the days in china are lovley and warm - nights are so cold and I only have flip flops so my feet are always purple and i boguth skirts and vest tops with me - so have been wearing the same pair of combats and jumper for days now!

we had to get a Chinese visa and then took a train to a place caled Guangzhou in China - which was about 2 hours away. It looked liked a generally ok busy bity bt we took the next train to the soutwest of China to a place called Kunming. This took 25 hours, but was a v. nice journey - had a soft sleeper - which is 2 bunks in a compartment - the other bunk was empty most of the time so we had it all to ourselves. Just slpet most of the time so the journey went realy quickly.

Unfortunatley we realised that the train pratically went past the Laos border - so we could have saved a lot of effort by coming to China from Laos in the first place - rather then going back to Bangkok and flying to Hong Kong and doing the long journey there and back!

Anyway, Kunming was a nice surprise - we were expecting a poor dirty Chines town - but its a big clean city with lots of malls and sky scrapers and v. laid back. Stayed in a really trendy guesthouse. Visited a couple of pagodas and a temple which had lots of cute little turtles swimming around. (one managed to get itself upside down so we spent ages watching it try to turn over - it took him about half an hour).

Spent 2 nights there and took the bus to a town called Dali - which has really stunning scenery. The town is v. touristy - but really nice. Hired some bikes today but it was so up hill and the bikes were rubbish that we had to walk them up hill. Eventually got to some chairlifts which took us about 1000 ft up the mountain which had amazing views. Had some lunch (getting the use of chop sticks). There was also a mountain path which we took - we didnt mean to go to far but in the end decided to walk the whole way - which was 10kms. Luckily there were some cable cars at the other end. Then had to get a taxi to get the rubbish bikes back.

will stay another day as there is a huge lake at the other side of town with some stuff to explore.

V. surprised by China - much nicer then I had expected and the people are v. friendly although they cant really speak any English so we have to point and mime a lot! And local beer is cheap and nice.

Anyway, off out for dinner in the freezing cold.