We flew from Vientiane to Kunming China and quickly realised China is not like SE Asia. Our days of easy travelling were over！On the bright side, the temperature dropped 10 C.
We arrived at the airport and were harrassed by 10 different touts in the terminal. Bit ridiculous really. Then we walked outside and tried to get a taxi to the hotel. We were turned away from 5 different taxi drivers!! Unbelievable... we couldn't figure out why they wouldn't take us when we were pointing to chinese characters in our Lonely Planet. Anyway.. we walked out of the airport and caught a city bus. We had to pay 5 times the fare since they don't provide change！
Billy miraculously figured out where we were and we started walking from the bus stop towards the hotel.
We arrived at the airport and were harrassed by 10 different touts in the terminal. Bit ridiculous really. Then we walked outside and tried to get a taxi to the hotel. We were turned away from 5 different taxi drivers!! Unbelievable... we couldn't figure out why they wouldn't take us when we were pointing to chinese characters in our Lonely Planet. Anyway.. we walked out of the airport and caught a city bus. We had to pay 5 times the fare since they don't provide change！
Billy miraculously figured out where we were and we started walking from the bus stop towards the hotel.
En route to our hotel near the university of kunming.
We toured a bit around the city while we waited for the international hospital clinic to open. We went to a tea shop and tried 4-5 different types of tea, which was quite fun. Tea is $$! We couldn't believe it! But tea is like wine to the Chinese, and they are willing to pay for it. We had a bit of sticker shock and just walked away with a bag of black tea. No $100 bag of green tea for us!
This is one of the 3 hospital buildings we had to explore to get Billy's tests done. It was quite the experience, one which I hope is never to be repeated! All I can say is, ICK! They don't even have soap in the bathrooms at the HOSPITAL!
Escaping the city for a bit, Billy walked around the university campus which was covered in parks, flowers and trees.
In Kunming we had a hard time finding suitable restaurants... either they were gross or they didn't have english menus. But we did follow Lonely Planet's advice and visit Salvadore's Coffee House. This turned out to be a godsend... not only did we meet english speakers who could give us lots of advice, but we had wonderful, recognisable food. I think we ate here 3 out of 6 meals. Billy even ordered the bacon burger twice ;)
All in all, Kunming was not that nice of a city, but we had a good time in the area of our hotel. Our hotel had the most useless staff we've ever encountered... "Can we use the phone?" - No ... "Can you make change for 100? ($20 AUD)" - No... "Can you call a taxi?" - No. ARRRRRRGH.
We also had an interesting time purchasing plane tickets to Lijiang. The internet sites that sell tickets don't accept international credit cards without all sorts of extra info which requires a printer, scanner and fax machine. Too bad we NEVER had access to any of those things, and we were in a business center for goodness sake. Technology is just not up to snuff. So anyway, we called the airplane ticket office (who incidentally callled my mother in california--oops--guess they really do pay attention to contact tel numbers) and they told us they would come to our hotel and we could pay cash. Luckily, though we were nervous about it, it wasn't a scam and it turned out to be easy-peasy. We've since bought 3 other plane tickets in a similar fashion.
We also made an investment into a Mandarin phrasebook... infinitely useful. Though it's not to be used as a 'teach yourself chinese pronunciation' guide! Billy has been doing that and we later learned he was only 20% right! DOH! Mandarin is a tough language to learn.
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