One wonders how much influence the weather has on how much you like a place. Its been 7 straight beautiful days here in Yunnan, and I am enjoying it here. I think I could vacation here for a few months. (Yunnan is larger than Germany...)
For my last day in Dali, I went for a bike ride with some Israeli guys from the hostel in the morning. But 1.5 hours into the ride, the petal on my bike broke, so I had to turn around and come home. I mostly relaxed in the afternoon (but had fish AND mushrooms for lunch), and then met this Israeli couple for dinner that I had met at Tiger Leaping Gorge. My big discovery that day was this excellent honey filled fresh bread that someone on the street was selling. I had 2 yesterday, and another one today.
Today I took the bus to Kunming. The drive was easy (nice highway with tunnels through the mountains) and arrived in Kunming. There was a bit of gridlock here, but I eventually made it to my hostel in a cab.
After settling in I went for a walk. It was a lovely saturday in the upper 70's. I first walked around a very large outdoor market with all sorts of cool foods like worms and scorpians and stuff. I then walked for a while on the streets to the west of Xi chang Lu. On this side of Xi Chang Lu, Everyone Stared at me. It was very strange. But what was even stranger, was as soon as I crossed Xi Chang Lu, the shops got a bit posher, and No one stared. Very funny. Anyway, I walked to this park by a lake, and there it was my turn to stare. I saw this attractive girl wearing a really cool hat walking with a bunch of friends, and I was looking at her as they passed, and then turned around after she went bye. One of her friends said something to her (apprently he noticed me) and she turned around and waved at me, so I waved back. It was rather funny.
After walking around, in a good mood, since the weather was so good, I was whisked into a hot pot place for dinner near Yunnan University. As usual, I order way too much food. First, I told the guy I was a vegetarian and he was completely parallized for 5 minutes as if he had no idea how to feed a vegetarian (Initiative is needed here). So I mentioned a few ingrediants (mogu=mushrooms, dofu, shoo-tsai=spinich, and I looked up the word for noodles) he tried telling me something (apparently that I had ordered too much food) because soon a large hot pot filled with dofu and other vegitibles arrived, followed by what I had ordered. Anyway, each extra ingredient was around 50 cents each, so I just had a delicious meal for 3 by myself.
There is one key difference between Kunming and the rest of China that I should mention. I have not mentioned this before, but in most of china, noone followed traffic lights and lanes or even sides of the road. Its all viewed as completely optional by the drivers, and intersections are complete madhouses. In kunming, the drivers seem to follow the traffic lights. Although, pedestrians still definitely do not have the right of way.
I am not sure if there are any sites here in Kunming, but I am enjoying walking around in the great weather.
As there is no ocean near here, I am wondering where all the seafood is coming from?
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention there are lots of people outside playing ma jong here. I might need to learn how to play.
