Quick stop in Kunming

So what's next? Well. for a while now, I have known that Rebecca was coming from Amsterdam for her holiday to see me and Gavin, who now lives in Singapore and it was time to start moving in that direction to meet up. We were still unsure where to meet, but once decision was made, I realised I had to leave immediately. Phuket in Southern Thailand is a long way away and the route there is not straight forward. There are a few options, but as I couldn't wait four days for a Vietnam visa, it was necessary to go to Kunming and then through northern Laos, or apparently there is an option of a boat from Jinghong that goes straight through to Thailand between the borders of Myanmar and Laos (no visa required I'm told) along the Mekong river, or the Lancang Jiang as it's known in China.

So, a beautiful train journey from Nanning to Kunming, passing kilometre after kilometre of never ending banana plantations in western Guanxi, through small towns dotted around a mountainous landscape. I had 5 young Chinese guys sitting around who were all friendly and spent the daytime part of the journey playing cards. Arrived Kunming at 6am and went to the Cloudland Hostel.

That day I spent with someone I met, first, eating a typical Yunnanese breakfast of "Crossing the Bridge Noodles", a huge bowl of soup, with plates of meat, mushrooms, an egg, spring onions and a few other unidentified things, which you are given uncooked and you throw into the bowl, in a specific order, to let them cook. Although I had heard of it before and seen it on menus I had never tried this, so what better place to try it than in the capital of Yunnan itself. And it's lovely !! We went to a "nationalities park" which is a park designed to inform tourists about the lifestyle and cultures of the 26 different ethnic groups that live in Yunnan province. To be honest, it's a bit of a theme park with a not very authentic feel. You get to meet people from each group and see their living style, houses, clothing, cultural habits, foods, music, rituals etc. I was dragged into a typical Daizu dance with a lovely Dai girl, snacked from some rice and nuts steamed in bamboo stick, entertained by some Wazu music and rained on for most of the morning in a typical rainy season downpour. It's set up by a lake with lovely views and is quite interesting if you have no plans to visit any of the ethnic group's real villages and see them living their lives in their true environment, but can't help feeling, the setting up of such a site and getting the young people from these villages to partake in the park, is just a way to encourage them to see how Chinese live, in a commercial world and is taking away some of the people of the future from their villages in an attempt to get them to see and live in the Han Chinese way.. May sound cynical, but it felt a little like that. When I have the time, I intend to see more of these ethnic groups, but in their remote villages in the mountains and along the banks of the Lancang Jiang, that's the only way to really appreciate their true environment, lifestyle and customs.


Left: Lunch from a steamed bamboo cane.
Right: Scenery from the nationalities park.

In the evening we went to a Bai (one of the ethnic groups) restaurant and I had one of the best meals for a long, long time. Everything was great, tasty and plentiful. So this day I ate two great meals, one error I made was not to take a leaf out of my friend Tina's blog and snap some photos, I'm always to keen to eat and forget about getting a good photo of good looking food before it's all gone !! The night finished with a night out in a Yunnan pub, playing drinking card games, not always recommended with Chinese as they are very enthusiastic about the drinking bit. The game was "shi dian ban" (ten and a half) and involved lots of topping up the glass and frequent drinking from the glass or more often glasses (at least the glasses are very small!). It was a fun night out and after many many bottles had been consumed, we called it a day and went home. Thanks to my English student HeWei and FeiFei for a great day out in Kunming.

Surprisingly I also met Tatsu from Japan today. Who? Well back at the beginning of November I met Tatsu in Kashgar in NorthWestern China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. We were in the same room in the Seman hotel in Kashgar for a few days, chatted a bit each day and then left at different times in different directions. Around 10 days later we met in Dunhuang, in a cafe and later on the road as we cycled by each other in opposite directions to/from Ming Sha Shan just outside of Dunhuang town. To see each other in a hostel in Kunming over six months later is remarkable, both of us having seen much of China in the meantime, but in totally different ways, following different routes. Was good to see a familiar face again.