July 15, 2013.
We were arriving to Kunming (昆明) by bus. In the earlier post I mentioned a lot of spitting was involved inside the bus and also at the bus station. This is common in China, but it can be even worse than that. We saw someone do their big business right on the street and blow their noses to their hands, even the lady-like women! Our bus was stopped by the police three times. They checked passports etc. While waiting we saw photos of accidents at the police stand. Even trucks had gotten mangled into tiny pieces in the accidents! One truck had been put on show on the side of the road, so people would drive more carefully. The bus trip took nearly 9 hours. We stopped for food once at a roadside restaurant, where we gulfed down tofu, Chinese cabbage and rice with chopsticks like locals. We've used chopsticks for years so it didn't bother us there were no forks around. Again we were the only Western people on the bus and at the restaurant.
At Kunming no taxi driver wanted to pick us up. How Chinese. Some non-taxi drivers were really interested in us though and offered us a ride. One of them was an older man who looked like he's on drugs and we were suspicious about him. After we saw that he had two women with small children in his car we decided to risk a ride with him. It might've been a family who offered us a ride, but we couldn't ask anything, 'cos they only spoke Chinese.
Later the man turned off the main road into a smaller alley...I hate when this happens, because it's so hard to follow where you're going when you're turning loads of small alleys, especially in China, where you might not have an internet available all the time (for a map), so we were a bit nervous of the whole situation. There was no need to worry though, as it turned out they were nice people who drove us straight to our hotel. Oh well, at least I was entertained by my imagination, getting some excitement from what otherwise was a very casual drive. The 16 km ride cost only five euros, which is good money for a local.
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| Kunming suburbs at night |
July 16.
I tried to speak some Chinese again, but even though I listened carefully how the words are pronounced my speaking didn't get us too far. The locals might expect to hear us speak English and don't understand foreign Chinese pronounciation. So we ended up doing laundry ourselves at our hotel room, because our hotel could hardly help us with anything and we couldn't find a laundry place nearby. We were able to at least switch the room to a non-smoking one. The reception girls giggled when they tried to speak some English back. We were also able to get a taxi to Cui Hu -lake at Kunming center, where many tourists walked with a local guide. I was kinda jealous at them, because travelling with a local guide makes everything so easy here and you get more out of the places. We didn't have any travel books with us, we couldn't possibly carry them for the whole year with all the dive gear and whatnot, so we travelled with only few notes written down back at home or with tips from our travel buddies or the internet, whenever we had the connection.
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| Covers providing safety for the taxi drivers |
Cui Hu (翠湖) -lake park is worth a visit, if you have the time in Kunming. The lakes inside the park are linked by traditional style bridges, there are islands with beautiful pavilions, various vendors selling local food and other things. The park is filled with beautiful trees, plants and flowers and you can watch pieces of performances from Chinese operas with the costumes and listen to folk music. And if you feel like you need an exercise you can join the groups in the park doing various styles of exercises. A lot of restaurants, hotels and shops are found from the edges of the park. We were in the park at working hours, when it was mostly filled with elderly people enjoying their time there.
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| Elderly people in their daily exercises at the park |
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| A statue to Father of Seagull. Mr. Wu walked 10 km every morning to the lake to see and feed the birds that still appear here early every winter. He spent 50 % of his retirement pay on the birds, becoming so close friends with them, that the birds flew to him when he called them, and was named Father of Seagull by the people. His spirits set a model for man and nature living together in harmony. |
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| One of many performances in the park |
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| One of many performances in the park |
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| One of many performances in the park |
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| Lotus pond |
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| The few shops inside the park |
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| Fresh juices |
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| Fish House/Viewing pavilion, 观鱼楼. |
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| Snacks of meat, tofu, etc. |
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| Weeping willow trees |
The park is quite big and you can spend hours there. We spent a few hours and later headed to an Italian restaurant closeby, where I ordered - or so I thought - a middle sized orange juice. What I got was a huge plate full of fruits though! This plate was actually on the drinks menu with three different prices, which I thought were the prices for different sized drinks. We ate most of it though and laughed that the plate was probably meant for a whole family. The waiters had good fun also watching us eat so much. We also had pizza with strange choice for toppings; broccoli and carrot. It wasn't very good, but it was the only vegetarian food they had.
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| Broccoli/carrot pizza by the lake |
We spent the rest of the day in the city center and some people said hello to us. Again many locals photographed me, which is just normal in China, they love to photograph tourists. We tried to find some normal salted popcorn from the city and I found it, so my day was saved. Asians have various flavours in popcorn and the most common one you can find is the caramel flavour. Salted popcorn is hard to find here. We'd gotten so used to the smell of durian on this trip that it actually now smelled alright to our noses when we found it. Kari swore to try it someday, while I still felt hesitant about it.
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| Kunming office buildings |
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| Fruits on wheels |
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| Portable police office |
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| Getting a massage etc at the city center |
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| Caramelized fruit |
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| Beautiful flowers at the center |
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| Open air tai chi practise |
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| No entry. The message is clear. |
Next blog: Xishan Forest Park, Kunming, China.
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