After over 30 hours on a sleeper bus from Laos we arrived at our first stop, Kunming.
We crossed the Laos/Chinese border with relative ease and the Chinese soldier was surprisingly gentle with our back packs and put most things back where he had got them from which was nice. Shortly after crossing the border we stopped for dinner in a small town and we where given our first piece of Chinese hospitality as a young lady invited us to dinner and paid for it without us knowing, plus she also gave us fresh fruit for the remainder of our bus journey!
We where looking forward to our arrival in Kunming as we had read up about the place and heard it was the land of "springtime" and also that the residents have a quality of life that is arguably the best in China! (quite a statement to make).
We got off the bus a little jaded and split a cab with our new Japanese mate who's name was "Nhow" (pronounced now) and after a shower and some breakfast we emerged refreshed and ready for the day.
After 5 minutes out on the street we realised that this part of our journey was going to require a lot more effort on our part as there where hardly any English signs and the staff in the hostel where we where staying seemed to be the only people who had a grasp of the English language.
We soon learnt that pointing to phrases in our Mandarin book was much better than trying to pronounce Chinese words and got us things a lot faster (but we will persevere with trying to speak the language).
Kunming was living up to it's name and we where treated to pleasant days full of sunshine - although it was warm there was a nice breeze and the humidity of south east Asia had vanished - which meant we could cover larger distances and see more of the city.
We visited lots of parks and discovered that they are used regularly by everyone - for practising games, exercise, karaoke, dancing and even floor calligraphy - plus are kept in immaculate condition - something which British people could take a lesson from.
We decided to go and get our train tickets in advance for our next stop Chengdu - so off we went to the ticket office and after some practice of pronunciation we managed to get our hard seat tickets for our trip to Chengdu within 5 minutes of arriving at the window. Leaving with a great sense of achievement we set off to try some local cuisine.
This proved to be extremely difficult as many restaurants and cafes do not vary from their menu options and getting things without meat in it was even more difficult!
We even walked 4km's to a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant only to be turned away by the staff because they didn't want to try and speak English even though we had our trusty Mandarin book with us!
This was the first major difference we noticed between the Chinese people and the rest of south east Asia - rather than try to help the Chinese will wave you away as they don't want to appear foolish by saying the wrong words to you - which is really frustrating at times.
At the hostel we made a friend (also Chinese) by the name of Majihua (pronounced mah-jee-kwa) who told us the food in Kunming is famous all over China and the reason a lot of Chinese people visit. He offered to take us to try this food so off we went to a local busy restaurant and after 15 minutes of trying to get a seat we where soon enjoying local specialities.
We also realised that people where constantly staring and photographing us as we walked around the city, which felt a bit weird at first.
We also stumbled across a juice bar called David's which turned out to be really awesome and cheap - but Leanne lost a pair of her sun glasses here.
I also got a haircut with the help of our trusty Mandarin book and I put my faith in Leanne to tell the guy not to mess my hair up too much.
Soon it was time to leave and we headed to the station to wait for the train to our next destination Chengdu.
To see the pictures from our visit to Kunming please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/KunmingChina24thTo27thAugust2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCOz1nP3muoPi6gE#
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