Blogs from Kunming, Yunnan, China, Asia

Kunming (the capital city of Yunnan province) Kunming was my first city in Yunnan. I took a 21 hour train from Loudi to get there. I was glad I had bought a Y450 "soft" sleeper ticket because the bed was much wider and the room came with a door. I really lucked out when I discovered that the other occupants of my cabin were 3 lovely Chinese girls. I joked with them in both Mandarin and English. They giggled when they saw the enormous amount of hair shown on my passport photo. The whole trip we noshed on Chinese snack foods (spicy tofu bites, sesame cookies, chicken wings, noodles, shatian pomelos, and mandarin oranges). I stayed at the Kunming Cloudland hostel for 4 nights. It's rooms were cozy and the shared bathrooms all got fresh flowers ... read more

Hello all, To begin the blog (and not to sound arrogant but) I must say, I've been a lot of places and seen a lot of things. The Spring Festival in China (AKA Chinese New Year) can be summed up in one word: "impressive". There have been some fireworks going on all week, all in a buildup to the big show: the first day of Spring Festival. The evening has been particularly loud and bright. Some background: Spring Festival (Chun Jie) is the celebration of the lunar new year. East Asians, the Chinese in particular, celebrate with food, alcohol, and fireworks. Just imagine a non-patriotic 4th of July multiplied by 100. There are 100 times more people, equal amounts of food and drink (per capita), and 10,000 times more fireworks. Lucky for me, I am a ... read more

Ok – zugegeben. Bis zum Himalaya sind es noch ein paar Hundert Kilometer – aber das ist in China keine Distanz mehr. Als ich noch in Peking meine Reiseroute für die weiteren Städte in China festgelegt habe, war die erste Priorität: nur noch in warmen Gegenden rumreisen. Da ich während meines Pekingaufenthaltes schon durch Workshops oder Wochenendtrips nach Tianjin, Xian und Shanghai fliegen konnte, waren ein paar Städte im nördlicheren Teil Chinas schon abgedeckt. Deswegen beschloss ich, mich hauptsächlich nur im Süden Chinas zu bewegen. Nachdem mein Plan in Hong Kong mit wunderbar angenehmen Temperaturen aufzugehen schien, wurde ich nach meinem eineinhalb wöchigen Aufenthalt in dieser tollen Stadt bei meiner Weiterreise nach Guilin eines besseren belehrt. Trotz intensiver Recherchearbeit meinten selbst die Hostelmitarbeiter in Guilin, dass es wohl der kälteste Winter se... read more

We had only planned to spend a short time in Kunming - mainly to visit the Stone Forrest nearby - before moving on but unfortunately I began to feel unwell and we had to stay longer. It is the capital city of Yunnan province and has a population of over seven million people. Enormous by Australian standards but average by Chinese figures. Kunming has developed rapidly in recent years under China's modernisation plan and that was very obvious to us as we had previously visited the city in mid 2005. To try and counteract traffic issues in large Chinese cities all the bus terminals are now situated on the edges of them eg traffic coming in from the west goes to the Western Terminals and so on. The bus from Jianshui took 3 hours and cost ... read more

Hello from China, I am currently sitting in the Kunming Airport, Yunnan Province. It is 2:55 am. I am safe and I'm not in trouble. I was super worried when I checked into my flight in Chiangmai. I was unable to printout my itinerary at the hostel, but luckily I had written down my information before I left, because I did not realize that I needed a visa to enter China for ten hours....rookie mistake. But the lady running the Check-in was very nice and she was able to have my itinerary faxed from Eastern China Airlines in Bangkok. I had to promise her that I would never make this mistake again. Trust me. I won't. The main thing is that I'm okay but on the plane I was freaking out! Would I be detained? Would ... read more

When travelling, you always meet other travellers who have been to the place you are planning on going to next, and what they tell you about that place can either make you really look forward to it or wish you were giving it a miss, depending on what they experienced there. It’s great to hear other people’s stories about places you are about to visit, as they can be a good source of information as well as get you excited for that place, but occasionally what you hear can be misleading – Kunming is the perfect example of this. We had been planning on going to Kunming from Lijiang for ages; it was always in our China itinerary as it was on the way down to the rice terraces we wanted to see, just for a ... read more

Day13 Kunming City Lu Bao Hua (Michael), our local guide has been bitten by the cycling bug so Jeff and myself went with him to visit a couple of bike shops in Kunming. You would not believe it but there are hardly any bike shops to choose from, maybe four or five in a city of 6000 people. The first shop had mostly hybrids and blunderbusses and only one with drop handlebars. The second shop was a GIANT retailer and had mostly hybrids and Mountain Bikes and quite a few with drops. However, they were for small Chinese riders and Michael is a 6' person and we struggled to find him one. The gears were also rather high for what he wanted so changes needed to be made. The staff were apathetic at best and did ... read more