|
  | |  |
It's all Kunming back to me now
Entry 12 of 18 | show all | print this entry |
Sorry about the dodgy song lyric title again!!!
Monday 7th April
I got up early for a shower before I got a motorbike ride to the Chinese border. There was a small window (and by window, I mean a hole in the wall - no glass) in the bathroom and when I was standing there showering I saw something out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. I turned around and completely busted a woman watching me from the balcony of the building next door!!! She quickly turned around and walked off. At the border I got through the Vietnamese departures within a couple of minutes, but the Chinese arrivals proved to be more of a problem. The guy at passport control just didn't believe that it was me in the picture! It is quite understandable as I was only 16 when the picture was taken. Anyone who has seen the picture will know why there was a problem. After holding up the so-called 'quick queue' for well over 10 minutes, and after inspecting my passport with a magnifying glass and getting other people to come and have a look, he eventually waved me through. I then had to put my bag through the x-ray machine. When it came out the other side the guy asked me if I had any books. The bloody things were right at the bottom so I had to empty the whole damn thing to get to them. Everytime I pulled one out he would ask "any more?". I was pretty baffled at this point why he would want to see my books, although I later found out the they were confiscating any books that mentioned Taiwan or Tibet as "propaganda"! Luckily I failed to mention the 100 or so pages of photocopied 'Rough Guide to China' that I had hidden away! In China hardly anyone speaks English, and all of the street signs were written in Chinese symbols, so finding the bus station proved to be rather difficult. After a lot of talking loudly and hand signs I found out that it was only 100m away from the border point! The bus that I had booked in Sa Pa was supposed to be leaving at 10.30am, but the ticket that I collected in Lao Cai earlier in the day said 12.30. Then, when I finally found the bus station they told me that my bus had broken down and I would have to wait until 1pm! At the bus station I got chatting to a couple of Belgian brothers, Tom and Koen Cardoen, who were going to Kunming like me. The bus ride was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Kunming at 11.30pm. So much for getting to Kunming early! We decided to head to a hostel called The Hump Over the Himalayas, which is based over a complex of about 10 bars and clubs. Prime location then! It took a little longer (a by little, I mean a lot) than expected to find it, but by 1.30am we were in our triple room. The hostel was amazing. It had a restaurant, bar, common room with a TV and DVD library, free pool, free internet, table football and ping pong! Amazing! We decided to go downstairs to an Irish bar for a beer before bed. This turned into a few! It was run by an absolutely insane, massively drunken German guy. Every time that we finished a beer he grabbed the bottle and hurled it out the door onto the street so that it smashed! I think we ended up heading back at around 3.30.
Tuesday 8th April
After our "one drink" had ended up with us drinking 4 640ml bottles of beer we all dragged ourselves out of bed for a full English breakfast. After eating we all went our seperate ways to explore the city. I found out that the Cardoens do their own thing during the day so that they are still talking to each other in the evening! My first destination was the disappointing Western Pagoda, which was a couple of hundred metres around the corner from the hostel. When you got there you could turn around and then 300m or so along an alley you could see the equally unimpressive Eastern Pagoda. I decided not to go and look at it and just zoomed in my camera for a picture! I then headed to the Bird & Flower market, which has a pretty deceiving name as most of the stalls just sell nik-naks apart from one which had an impressive collection of swords for sale! Kunming certainly lived up to its reputation of being the most relaxed city in China, as I walked around for 20 minutes without being harrassed once. In the pets section they had birds in cages, lizards, and there was a box full with about 20 miniature rabbits all cuddled up together that were really cute. You would have loved it Becky! I then set off to find the park which was a bit of a mission as the street names were all in Chinese symbols and my map had them all in English. After an hour I found my way there after walking quite a long way in the wrong direction. I was suprised to find that the park wasn't actually a park at all. It was a big lake with a collection of concrete islands and bridges linking them together. I spent a couple of hours wandering around listening to the groups of old Chinese men playing traditional music and watching a group of Chinese women doing American style line-dancing. That was pretty bizarre! One of the groups were really good apart from their dreadful woman singer. They played a type of music that sounded like British folk music and a couple of songs in they started playing 'Jingle Bells'. Weird! Back at the hostel I bumped into Koen and we went for food. I don't know if I have mentioned this before or not, but the one thing that I have struggled with in Asia is the constant spitting that everyone seems to do. It is not just a normal spit, but they have to properly announce it first by hocking it up and then spitting wherever they are. Even the women do it! As we were eating our food in the restaurant, one young Chinese guy next to us kept hocking up all this phlegm and the proceeded to spit it into the bin on the floor! Nice! We headed back to the hostel at 5pm for a beer, which proved to be a vital mistake! We drank outside on the terrace until 1am with Tom when we went inside to play pool. We ended up playing 'Killer' with two English guys, Nick and Tom, and a Dutch guy, Kristoff. See, I can remember names sometimes!!! At 4am most people were so plastered that they could barely stand up and I was left chatting to a Chinese girl, Gillian. At 6.30 we went for coffee across the road at McDonalds which was quite difficult getting to baring in mind I had been drinking draught beer for the last 13 hours! We sat at a table with a little homeless Chinese boy and played with his minature rabbit like I had seen at the market earlier. I eventually crawled into bed at 8am!
Wednesday 9th April
I woke up at midday feeling like crap. I managed to force down a fried breakfast but it didn't make me feel any better. Whilst I was eating I saw Nick, who was also looking a bit worse for wear! When I woke up I saw 'Salvadores 7pm' scrawled across my forearm. I vaguely remember telling Gillian and her friend that I would meet them there for food. I spent the whole afternoon propped up in a chair on the terrace before trudging off to Salvadores at about 6. I had managed to lose my map during the drinking madness of the night before so I had to memorise Koen's map before I left. I found my way to the park okay, but then I got a bit lost! I then had an amazing stroke of luck. I stopped the first white guy that I had seen in ages and asked if he spoke English. He was an American journalist called Austin who was also looking for Salvadores! He had the name and address written in Chinese and also spoke Chinese himself which helped when we needed directions. After 10 minutes we found our destination and met up with Gillian. Her friend wasn't with her. I later realised that this was supposed to be a date of sorts, which suprised me considering there had been absolutely no flirting whatsoever the night before and I didn't fancy her at all!!! We ended up going to a Korean place for food although I couldn't eat anything inside as I thought I was going to be sick! After a brief walk which ended up at the park I managed to get away and headed back to the hostel. I thought the old 'hair of the dog' trick might cure my sickness, but after a couple of sips I realised that it wasn't going down to well and went to bed early!
Phew. That was hard work! If I can find somewhere with internet when I am in Tiger Leaping Gorge I will do my blog for my time in Dali.
Love you.
xxx
Where I stayed:
The Hump Over The Himalayas
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries from China or try a new search. |
| |
| Table of Contents |
| 12. | It's all Kunming back to me now - Kunming, China Apr 09, 2008 |
|
|
|
|
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
4 votes 
