Kunming was never on my itinerary but I came on a whim after a few people told me it was lovely and worth visiting.
Took a soft sleeper on a train to Kunming - a 22 hour epic. The trains here are huge at least twice the length of one of our intercity trains, with some double decker carriages too. At the train station it was almost like everyone at Kings Cross at rush hour wanted to board the same train.
Even with that amount of people, unlike British trains it left on schedule and arrived at our destination early - result.
Whilst the train had lovely beds, the journey was long, the food was bad but I had excellent company in a Spanish couple. Miguel has been to India fourteen times and he spoke with an Indian English accent, apparently he learnt English whilst travelling in India! Regardless he infected me with an enthusiasm for India that even my parents haven't managed to do and as a result it has been firmly placed on my list of places to visit.
Kunming is a lovely, relaxed city. The nightlife here is great too, probably because of the university. On the first day, I asked the hostel for public transport options to get to Dian Chi - a 50km long lake, I got on the right buses but managed to miss this colossal lake and ended up at Yunnan Nationalities Village instead. In my defence I did catch a glimpse of some water and ask the bus driver if I should get off but he was adamant that I stay on.
Visited Stone Forest which is a national park of limestone karsts, even stayed the night which was sort of worth it as it meant I could see the most popular parts of the park in the early morning and late afternoon without the hoards of Chinese tourists.
Had a huge number of people ask me about my ethnicity. It got to the stage where I could recognise the look in their eyes as they were trying to place me and the light bulb moment when I told them where I came from.
New culinary discoveries
None to report, have not been adventurous as the food here on the whole is not great, it's very oily which whilst the stomach and taste buds don't object to, the eyes detest. Right now if I was given a choice of any dish I wanted in the whole wide world I would pass on the Profiteroles and Tiramisus of this world and opt for a huge bowl of assorted non green vegetables. When I order meat dishes I seem to get 99% meat and 1% of tiny vegetable slithers. When I order assorted vegetables I get green cabbage, ok it might be different varieties of cabbage but how can that pass for assorted? How I long for colour in my food.
Currently in Lijiang
