Category: China

Well, to continue where Philippa unexpectedly finished off…

…(whe)n we arrived, the driver and his wife were happy to accept our US$10.00 note and were half way down the street with it before we explained we expected some change, man we are stingy!

We were finally able to change some currency at the hotel which was a big relief; it is really scary not even being able to purchase a bottle of water. The rooms were nice and clean, and I got excited about having 35+ channels on the TV – even though 34 of them are in Mandarin (and the 35th one is only in English occasionally).

China (well, Kunming) is really scary at first. Philippa and I have done a little bit of travel, and this is the first place that has really freaked us out. The trusty Lonely Planet guide informs us that Kunming is a sleepy, slow city as far as China is concerned… WHAT!! This is the maddest place I have ever been to…

Initially we just thought everyone was rude, but we now believe the problem is the water – they are putting speed or red-bull or something in the water! Everyone, the traffic, the cats a dogs, crying babies – everything is running at 210%. Hmmmm, I’m a little scared about our imminent trip to Shanghai!

Other than running around the local shops (including Wal*Mart — which is another blog altogether), we went off to the Bamboo Temple today. This was a very different Buddhist temple, especially the “surfing” Buddha’s (google it) which were awesome. Apparently the guy who created them “went missing” (seems to happen a lot in China) afterwards!

We are flying off to Zhongdian tomorrow (heading towards Tibet), and than working our way back to Kunming by bus for our final flight to Shanghai! Not sure what Internet facilities are further up north, so this might be the last you hear from us for a while (although I’m sure some enterprising nerd ha managed to work something out).

Finally, hope my washing is now dry – we paid some little old lady Y10 per KG to wash them two days ago, and it keeps raining, and therefore never ready! I’m now officially out of undies!!

After two days of relaxing in Chang Mai, we have caught a plane to Kumning China. What a culture shock it has been! Arriving via plan we saw some of the country side, which was all divided into lots, with blocks of high rise building right next to them. At that stage it dawned on Matt and I that this was going to be quite different to anything that we have experience before.

Customs was efficent, thought the health questionairre a little personal, “Have you experienced any symptoms of HIV? or pyschosis?”. A the airport we discoverd that there was no currancy exchange or ATM which we were banking on, as we were unable to buy Chinese Yuan in Thailand. This left us in a bit of an awkward postition, with 30+ taxi drivers trying to secure our business, rain+++ and no money (only USD). We finally negotiated (with no English) a trip in a private vehicle to a hotel of our choice for USD4. We got caught in peak hour traffic, in what we were expecting to be a country town (3 million people), whe