Back and forth from Yunnan's captial

This may be the most disorganized entry, because we went to and from Kunming throughout our trip. We flew into Kunming from Shenzhen airport on our first day. Then, after our trip to Xianggelila, we went back to Kunming for one day. Finally, we ended our trip with one night and one day in Yunnan's capital. Kunming was a moderately large city, with a nice transportation system, great shopping, and wonderful food. We feel like Kunming was an appropriate bookend for our trip.

DAY 1 IN KUNMING: The first day

Kunming was a moderately large city, with a nice transportation system, great shopping, and wonderful food. We feel like Kunming was an appropriate bookend for our trip.

We flew to Kunming from Shenzhen airport, right at the border between Hong Kong and the mainland. It took us quite a while to get through customs, largely because we didn't follow instructions very well. At the Shenzhen airport, we met our first Yunnan local, a young woman who was quite helpful in letting us know where to check in. She told us she was from Kunming, and even provided us with suggestions and opinions on how best to explore the area. She told us that the local specialty was "guoqiao mixian" which means "crossing the bridge noodles." This particular dish is vegetables, pork, spices, soup, noodles and sauces mixed together, and a layer of oil is added to the top, which keeps the noodles steaming hot. Legend claims that this dish was invented because a woman wanted to be able to bring her husband, who was studying far away, hot noodles, and she discovered that the layer of oil kept it hot throughout the journey, thus the name. We decided that this had to be our first dish to taste.

After we arrived, we were ambushed with salespeople who pulled us in many directions yelling "Where are you going? Where are you staying?" One man continued to follow us throughout the airport, which made me so flustered I wandered into the middle of the parking lot simply to avoid his incessant questioning. Finally, we found a bus to the train station, where we bought our night train tickets to Dali, the next stop on our trip. We then wandered the streets near the train station, our first priority to find something to eat. We found many restaurants with what looked like street food. They were quiant little places with cooked food in the streets, and a few tables in open nooks. We chose one, and ordered some extremely cheap dumplings.

After that, we found our way to Beijing Road, the largest road in Kunming. We looked at the shops, and at one point found a small market with modest but colorful local souvenirs, including tie dyed T-shirts, colorful hats and purses, wooden masks, and cute dolls dressed in minority costume. At one of the shops we met a nice old man who found us quite interesting. He explained to us that he spoke Russian and Chinese, but could not speak English. He then told us that if we wanted to, we could speak with him, and it would help our Chinese to improve. He had a small flute-like instrument called a "hulu" (which is a kind of gourd) which he played quite well. I think he very much enjoyed our company, because he seemed very sad to see us walk away to catch our train. We were also sad to leave Kunming so quickly, but we were also excited to head off to Dali.

DAY 2 IN KUNMING: Intermission

A few days had passed, and we were already halfway through our vacation. We had been to Dali, Lijiang, Hutiaoxia (the Tiger Leaping Gorge), and Xianggelila. We had decided to fly from Kunming to Xishuangbanna because we had heard that the long distance busses between the two places could be quite dangerous, and while we were adventurous, we were not illogical. However, even though we flew from Kunming to Xishuangbanna, we wanted to save money from Xianggelila to Kunming. Thus, we sat on a bus for what turned out to be the most uncomfortable 14 hours of my life.This day in Kunming turned out to be some of the worst luck we had, but still included amazing experiences.

I had already realized that the busses in Yunnan were quite agonizing, but I assumed since we were riding on a sleeper bus, the discomfort would be minimal. I turned out to be sadly mistaken. The beds were barely large enough for an average Chinese person; thus my feet did not fit. It was arctic levels of cold, since there was no heat, and many people opened their windows to smoke. Furthermore, even with open windows, the bus was saturated with cigarette smoke, and the smoke-filled, cold dry air made it quite impossible to breathe. Added to this was motion sickness, mild food poisoning, and an inability to sleep, and by the time we reached Kunming, I was ready to find a hotel room simply to get some rest.

Instead, however, feeling sick and miserable, we went to the train station to buy tickets to go to the stone forest, a large petrified woodland park with archaic stones approximately 90 KM from Kunming. For the first time on our trip, my Chinese failed me at the ticket counter, and somehow, a trip that I assumed would cost 30 RMB round trip cost 70 RMB one way. We found out once we boarded the train that it was because we had bought first class tickets. At least it was a comfortable ride there. One of the more surprising sights of our trip we then saw in the train station; what seemed like troops of Chinese soldiers were lined up in Kunming to take the train. We were surprised to see them everywhere, and they seemed equally surprised to see us. We tried to very subtly snap pictures of them before we ran away from our fear of being discovered.

There are two stone forests, the main one directly behind the train station, and a quieter, more ancient one approximately 8 KM away. We decided, for monetary reasons, to only go to the quieter one, since the entrance fee was much lower. We found a car to take us there; once we arrived, however, he told us that the smaller park was closed. We argued with him for a bit, and then he offered to take us back to the main one. I didn't believe that the park was closed, and even if he was telling the truth I was angry that he didn't tell us until after we had to pay him, so we stayed at the closed park, assuming we could still enter. Surprisingly, he was telling the truth; the park was closed. Still angry from being taken advantage of, we decided to walk down the road and try to find a way in.

We wandered down the road a bit until we found a trail far away from the entrance that led into the forest, which we walked in to look at the large stones. We took some pictures, and decided to head back. As we were leaving, we lost the original trail we took, and had to wade through waist-deep weeds. We found our way to the road, but discovered that some of the plants on the trail had seeds somewhat like velcro, and we were absolutely covered in them. As we walked back to find a ride to the train station, we frantically picked the seeds off our clothes, hoping that no one would discover we entered the park illegally.

When we bought train tickets, we asked for the cheapest train tickets possible. On the way to the stone forest, the train ride was about 90 minutes, and we assumed it would be the same coming back. Our flight was at 7:10, so we thought a 3:00 train would give us plenty of time. We sat in the third class seating area, the air filled with smoke and the ground covered in moldy orange peels, spit out seeds, and cigarette butts, for what seemed like forever. About 5:30, we had not yet arrived, and we were starting to get nervous. We asked the train director when we would arrive in Kunming, and he told us 6:25. We began panicking, asking why it would take so long, and the conductor, a little old man, looked at us quizzically and explained "this is the slow train, didn't you know?" We told him that our flight was at 7:10, and asked him if we had any other options. He walked away and asked the conductor, who then told us he would do his best to get the train to arrive as early as possible.

"Early as possible" turned out to be right on time, and Ally and I stood at the door with all the smokers waiting to leap off the train. We sprinted through the train station towards the main road; after only about 10 seconds my cough set in and I felt unable to breathe. Somehow, we were able to find a taxi, who got us to the airport in 10 minutes. We ran towards the check in gate, where a professional yet indignant woman scolded "you are late" and told us that we had to take the next flight available. We had to check in by 6:40, and we arrived at 6:43. Nevertheless, we got a flight only an hour and a half later, and were off to Xishuangbanna.

DAY 3 IN KUNMING: The end of our trip

We arrived in Kunming from Xishuangbanna quite late; luckily, we had been given the name of a hostel by a fellow traveler in Xishuangbanna, and asked the taxi driver to take us there.  We had been relatively fortunate throughout our trip, as we never had to share a room with other people. Our luck, however, ended with our last night, and we were put in a room with two other travelers from mainland China.

The hostel, Cloudland, was a large bar and restaurant, with three floors of rooms connected by a first floor gaming area. The bar had a nice atmosphere, and many foreigners and Chinese travelers relaxed on large soft couches with large beers and french fries. We found our way to our room, which was nicely furnished with two sets of bunkbeds, a desk, and even four small closets. The furnishings were all wood, and it felt quite homely. We ordered a small bowl of soup, and then almost immediately got ready for bed.

The people we shared our room with were both single travelers, one boy and one girl. They were both from Sichuan (which many people were) and the boy was here on business while the girl was traveling Yunnan. Both were quite friendly and enjoyed talking to us, especially about Hong Kong. We didn't talk long, however, as we were both exhausted; we instead went almost straight to bed.

The next morning, we awoke and prepared to go and see the "Ethnic Village" or minzu quan as our last activity in Yunnan. We got detailed instructions from the hostel workers, and then set off towards the city. Before we caught the bus to go to the village, we found a nice restaurant on the street, where we enjoyed our last bowl of guoqiao mixian, which we ordered along with two large pieces of bread and two baozi (stuffed buns) for only 4.50 RMB.

We had to take two busses  to arrive at the Ethnic Village, which was 35 RMB to enter. We crossed a beautiful bridge to enter the city, and then were confronted with store after store of souvenirs. Since Ally and I had been backpacking, and thus carrying everything we had with us, we had done very little shopping throughout the trip simply for practicality's sake; therefore, we decided that this was the place to buy all of our souvenirs.

Once we started shopping however, we realized that the salespeople were charging us nearly 4 times the price of the objects. We got into two major arguments with salespeople, both of which ended in our favor. The first was over a small musical instrument (the hulu) and a wooden mask. A young salesperson told me that the objects were worth 60 RMB each. I told her I would pay 80 for the two. She argued, and settled at 90 RMB. As I was asking Ally if she thought that was a good deal, another older saleslady came up to me and asked how much I would pay for both the mask and the hulu. I told her 80 RMB, and she said "absolutely not, the hulu alone is worth 160." I explained to her that another lady had originally told me 60, and had settled on 90 for the two objects. The older lady shot a choleric look to the younger saleslady, who then looked at me and said "she meant 90 for only the hulu." he younger saleslady, playing along, then nodded fervently. I began arguing, explaining to them that they were not being honest with me, and after about 15 seconds of yelling, I began to storm away. Both of the sales ladies stopped me and said "how much will you pay?" I told them 90 for both, and with fuming glare, they both agreed. Even though I was happy with the price, I was angry at how they tried to manipulate me, assuming that I didn't understand.

The second argument we got into with salesladies at the Ethnic Village was over small wooden minority dolls. My friend Ally fell in love with one particular store's version, and decided to buy quite a few as souvenirs for both her friends and herself. I also decided I wanted one for myself. Ally began picking out many ones of all different sizes, and I decided on one full sized doll, and one small keychain. We argued with the ladies for nearly 10 minutes over the price, and finally had come to a little less than 20 for each of the large ones, and a little less than 10 for each of the small keychains.

Then, as we began packing up, Ally and I both reached for one particular small keychain, then realizing that we had both wanted the same one. We asked her if she had any more, and she pointed to another one that was missing two beads. We explained to her that that one was broken, and asked if she either had another one, or if she could fix that one. She refused on both parts. We continued to argue with her, questioning her honesty (as they claimed that the dolls were hand made) and inquiring why she wouldn't fix that particular doll. Finally, after being quite angry, she pulled two beads off another doll and gave them to us. We left feeling angry, but satisfied.

Among the large amounts of shopping, we still managed to sightsee a bit in the Ethnic Village. Of particular interest was the Wazu village. The Wa were a tribe in northeastern Yunnan, which was famous for hunting buffalo. There were many cow skulls surrounding their village. We also enjoyed the Baizu village, a tribe near Dali that was known for their methods of dying cloth and decorating them with wax, called batik method.

As we were walking around and taking pictures, we came across a young boy that seemed about our age. He asked us to take a picture with him. We then ran into him 10 minutes later, and he asked once again to take a picture with us. After the second picture, he told me that he would be happy to see the village with us, and help us carry all of our bags (by that point we had accumulated an embarrassing amount of plastic shopping bags). We found out he was also originally from Hong Kong, but now went to school in Guangzhou. He said he had forgotten all of his English, but his Puntonghua was quite good, and we were able to have nice discussions with him. Apparently, he very much liked American basketball, and I feel as though I disappointed him, as he seemed to know more than I did about American teams (I think he was equally disappointed that I came from Colorado, which has an embarrassing basketball team).

After we had bought seemingly more things than we had originally brought with us to Yunnan, we headed towards the exit. Our Hong Kong friend helped us find a taxi for a reasonable price, after taking more pictures and exchanging e-mail addresses. We were very happy to have found another friend.

At that point, our trip to Yunnan came to an end. Sitting in the airport, we both had deflated looks on our faces, as we were very sad to say goodbye to this province. Nevertheless, it was an amazing 10 days that I don't think either of us will forget.