Kyte filled Kunming

Kunming is a great city; the chinese call it the spring city due to its abundance of flowers and stable (beautiful) climate. Our arrival at 2 in the morning after our 9 hour bus trip mutated into a 18 hour beast was not so ideal....luckily a Korean girl who spoke great Chinese (Wandu)...sorted out a room for the three of us and we had a good few hours sleep. Went to the main backpacker hostels in town, weren't so great so we headed north to the university area. Had to work our little buts off and stay in an expensive room for one night but ended up scoring a sweet little apartment; cheap, for foreign students studying at the universitites; great to spread out and have our own little balcony. Also we were right in the center of the university district with great cafes, resturants and bars..alll very cheap. No poo, pee only signs in some of the toilets!!!The French Café had great food; we squeezed in quite a few of their pastries (lemon meringue pie) and the odd croque monsuier. Good chinese resturants with such favs as sizzling beef on a hotplate (Mark tried the sizzling tripe, wasn't as good as at home; too tripey) and deep fried pork spare ribs....and bok choy with shrooms. Quite a few Korean resturants and we had our favorite dishes; Bi Bim Bap (rice bowl beef stuff) and Yuk Gae Jang (kim chi stew). Did lots of walking around kunming and used the very efficient and cheap buses. Clare bought some great wool to knit a scarf with. Strolled around the university campuses for a morning; green grounds and nice and quiet. Also walked through some of the parks, big lake next to where we were staying and had a game of scrabble amongst the weekend crowds and musicians practicing their songs. Just realising (writing this from kathmandu) that we spent five days in Kunming and ddin't do any real sights!!! Great little flower and bird (lots of little turtles here also) market in a couple of remnant blocks of old style buildings; this section of town oozed character, but was very small. Otherwise kunming is a grand city with massive department stores and wide boulevards. Arrived at the train station nice and early for our trip to Dali; finally a train. Befriended by a very sweet Chinese girl (Melody) who ended up being in the berth next to us... Easy overnight journey, both got plenty of sleep and felt fairly refreshed when we arrived at Dali at 5 in the morning.

bird and flower market

briquette bike

entrance to our apartment

frying pastry twirls

lots of little turtles

our apartment

rainy day baby

the hump balconey