Blogs from Yunnan, China, Asia - page 11

Geo: 25.7, 100.15We were only planning to stay a couple of days in the small town of Dali and ended up staying for four days. Dali is a very old town where the first settlements are dated from 3000 years ago. Located at 1900m high, near the lake Erhai, the town is surrounded by mountains up to 4000m high. It is just an awesome place and you can judge by yourself when looking at the photos we took.I (Elfi) had the contact of a friend of a friend (Matthieu), his partner (Dorine) and their newly born daughter. We met the family in a park near the city centre. It's where we tried tea with "crisanteum" flower for the first time. They introduce us to the region and their circle of friends. It is how we got ... read more

Kunming is home to approximately 3.5 million people representing all 26 minority ethic groups in the province. About 75 miles from Kunming is the "Stone Forest", covering 96,000 acres, containing both large and small forests as well as lakes and waterfalls. About 270 million years ago the region was covered by the sea. Over time the waters receded, uncovering a massive bed of limestone pinnacles which due to time and the elements, have been whittled into tree-like forms, rising in densely packed groupings that do resemble a forest. In the evening we enjoyed a folklore show featuring Sani women in their native costumes. These dancers were part of the opening show at the Beijing Olympics.... read more

I had some weighty thoughts about drunken singing stints in an old city night club but let me just say we had fun last night and the band, for some reason, kept buying me beer. Always a mistake. Jinyi got some kids from Shenzhen up dancing with us so it wasn't so embarrassing until the bandleader kept asking me to sing the final song. I thought he meant we were to get up and dance one last time but he wanted me to sing and Jinyi was running around snapping photos so …. Sorry about that China: Hey Jude never sounded so bad! I'm adding as many photos as I can. Hope you can understand how to get here.... read more

Geo: 25.05, 102.7So as I started to write this from 32,000 feet up, somewhere above Bangkok I got to thinking about how many kilometers I've travelled so far. My trusty app informs me that I've blogged about 2793km, add on 1527km between Hangzhou and Chengdu and the 2435km between Kunming and Kuala Lumpur and my trusty calculator informs me that the total is 6755km or 4197 miles. Considering Hangzhou to London is 5723miles, it's not a bad distance! When I arrived in Kunming at 5am and after an unusually warm and bumpy train ride, I piled off the train with (no exaggeration) about 1000 other people and went to find the bus stop. Eventually I ended up at the hostel and had a nice nap. Kunming is a city famous for its wonderful climate - it's ... read more

One of the special animals of China is the snub-nosed monkey. There are actually five species. The golden snub-nosed monkey is the most widespread but also annoyingly difficult to see, especially now that China has forbidden access by foreigners to all the habituated troups (this was the species I went to Zhouzhi to try and see and was refused admittance). Then there's the Yunnan or black snub-nosed monkey which is restricted to a small area of northwest Yunnan, and the Guizhou or grey snub-nosed monkey which is found on just one mountain in Guizhou. These second two species were both formerly treated as subspecies of the golden monkey, which is quite ridiculous if you see how completely different they all are! Down in North Vietnam is the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, and over in Burma is the ... read more