We took a one hour flight from Guilin to the city of Kunming. We got our luggage and then headed out of the airport building to where a sign was marked as the official taxi stand. There was a line of taxis parked along a curb. There are signs warning not to take any unofficial taxis. As we made our way over to them a guy ran up to us saying he would take us to town. We assumed he was one of the illegal taxis, so we pointed to the line of taxis and asked which one his car was. He would not point to any and just kept on saying 40 yuan to town. We knew this was too high of a price and said no and kept walking. We approached the first car in the line and asked how much to town. The driver did not speak English and just stared at us. He didn't seem to have any interest in taking us. So we moved onto the next cab. By this time the guy who first approached us started yelling 30 yuan. We just ignored him. The next cab in line didn't seem to want to take us either.
Soon we had a group of taxi drivers around us chatting and pointing at our bags. Then they opened the 2nd cabs trunk and started pointing to it and shaking their heads. It seemed they did not want to take us because they felt our bags would not fit in the trunk. We had two large bags and two small backpacks. We had always fit in a cab before. We motioned that the big bags could go in the trunk and the small ones could come in the cab with us. Still no one wanted to take us. We just stood there in disbelief. We are at a airport of a major city and a taxi will not take us to town. At this point some official looking guy in a uniform walked up and started pointing at the trunk, our bags and us. He started sternly saying something to the first cab driver as well as the rest of them. We don't know what they were up to, but they seemed to be in trouble from this guy. Suddenly our two big bags were getting put into the trunk and the officer motioned for us to get in the back of the cab. We asked again how much and he just pointed to the meter inside the cab. Wow, a taxi that is actually going to use the meter. So the cab ride that we were originally getting told prices of 40 and 30 yuan ended up costing only 12 yuan on the meter.
Kunming is a large city with a population of 4 million and is at an elevation of 1900 meters. I think for us sea level living folks, this would be the highest elevation we have ever been at. We do believe we were feeling some effects from the elevation in the first couple of days here. We both had a slight feeling of general unwellness, dizzy and a bit nauseated at times. We could definitely feel the difference in our breathing if we were climbing up stairs or doing anything strenuous.
We were really surprised at how big of a city Kunming was and how westernized it felt. Many parts of it reminded us of Vancouver. Some parts of the city have really wide boulevards and resemble Singapore. The city seemed like any other big city in North America. Tons of shopping, skyscrapers, business people, etc. The traffic is a little crazy and typical of the rest of China though.
We got dropped off at the Camelia Hotel. It has both a hotel and a hostel. The reception first pointed us to the hostel. I left Jack with the bags and went to check it out. Some of the hostel type places we have stayed at have been quite nice. This one was not the case. This one had dilapidated old rooms, the kind where you would be scared to touch anything. A double room was 130 yuan. I came back to the hotel and asked to see a room there. The room I was shown was an excellent double with bathroom and typical of a hotel like the Ramada back home. It was 200 yuan. Maybe the 70 yuan difference is a lot of money for someone on a really tight budget. We could hardly believe the difference between the two rooms, it equals about $10 Canadian dollars.
We were soon out wandering the streets to check out the many places listed in the Lonely Planet that have western style food. The first thing we noticed while walking around is how many people have small dogs here. It seemed every second person was walking a pekinese, pug, or a little dog resembling a chihuahua. We also saw our first wrinkle dog , or Sharpei I think is the proper name. We are still waiting to see a Chow dog, which I think comes from China?
We had our first dinner at the City Cafe, which is not too far down the road from our hotel. The food was delicious. I had a curried rice and vegetable dish with chapati bread and Jack had a vegetable and tofu hotpot and side of rice. We really appreciate when we get some good food in China.
There are a lot of university students in Kunming. We spent one day wandering around the university grounds and the nearby lake. The university grounds were full of students in cap and gowns getting their photos taken. There are lots of great restaurants and cafes in this area too. The French Cafe is another great place for food. There's a great store called Pauls. This store specializes in hard to get western items. We were in heaven when we walked into this place. They had stuff we had not seen in months. They had Campbell's soups, organic cereals we eat at home, western crackers, real butter, cup a noodles, kraft dinner, peanut butter, maple syrup, pancake mixes, granola bars, the list goes on and on. They also have a great selection of toiletry items from home as well. We got our big bag of goodies, hardly caring about the price. When we stopped to examine what we had, we worked out the pricing and it cost us about the same as it would have at home. Of course this amount was expensive as far as buying stuff in China goes.
We had to laugh as we walked around this area and saw a DVD shop, which was obviously selling illegal copies. It was right next door to a police station! We found more great shopping in a huge pedestrian area with enough stores to keep you busy for days. There is a store called Carrefour. It is a huge two level department and food store, like a Walmart. They had anything you could possibly imagine from electronics to camping gear, clothing, full fledge grocery store, you name it. The store has a flat escalator that takes you up to the 2nd level. You take your shopping cart up with you. There are powerful magnets that hold the wheels of the cart in place and you can't move it if you try. In the center of the up and down escalator there is a trough filled with small impulse shopping items. How convenient you can even shop while you are moved from floor to floor.
We needed to do laundry again and our hotel room was not very conducive to doing it ourselves. We decided to use the hotels service. It was a bit pricey as far as prices go in China. For a couple grocery bags full it was a bit under $10 Canadian. We put the clothes into 2 bags. House cleaning came to our room to pick it up. We explained to the lady that one bag was okay to put in the washer and dryer, but the other one was not to be put in the dryer, hang dry only. She seemed to understand. We were really nervous. This would be the first time we had let someone do our laundry in China. We have always been afraid that communicating hang dry only would be too difficult. We have a hard enough time trying to get clothes big enough to fit us in Asia, we can't afford to have them shrunk!
Jack went down to the reception the next day and picked the laundry up. He brought the bag into the room and had a strange look on his face. I was full of anxiety, I was imagining all kinds of things that would be wrong with the clothes. He pulled them out of the bag and laid them on the bed. It was the most incredible laundry job we have ever seen. The Chinese really are the best launderers in the world. Each t-shirt had been immaculately pressed and folded around a piece of cardboard and then placed in a cello package. They looked like we had just purchased brand new clothes. The pants were also pressed and folded onto hangers and placed in bags as well. One pair of Jacks grubby cargo pants was hardly recognizable.
One day later in the evening we had come back to our hotel after a lot of walking around. We decided to check out the massage place that was in the same building as the hostel associated with our hotel. We went up to the front door and got greeted by a young girl. We looked at the price sign and decided we would both get a herbal bath foot massage. Jack had to go to the bathroom so ran back to the hotel room. I said I would get started with my massage and meet him inside.
I was taken up to the 2nd floor of the building and put into a room with a group of chairs and foot stools. The girl brought a bucket of hot water and I placed my feet into it. After a a few minutes a guy came into the room, he said hello and crouched down at my feet. I assumed this is the person who is going to do my massage. Before I even knew what was happening this guy had a razor sharp tool at my big toenail. It looked like something you would do surgery with. I pulled my foot away and must have had a extreme look of shock on my face. He spoke little English so I couldn't do much to communicate with him. He looked puzzled and grabbed my foot and tried to start slicing at my toenail again. I pulled away again and said no thank you. He was very persistent and went to grab another instrument from his little operation kit. This time it was some scary looking file device and he motioned to start scraping at the side of my toe. I again said no and stated I just wanted a massage. He got very angry and started yelling at me in all kinds of Chinese words.
This got the attention off all the staff and soon the room was filled with people. One guy that came in spoke some English and asked what was wrong. I said I only want the massage. He pointed at a board on a table beside me and showed me that the manicure was only 20 yuan. I said no that is fine, only the massage please. The guy trying to amputate my big toe, kept saying manicure, good, good. Again I said no, the massage only please. The other man finally said okay and everyone started to exit the room. Jack showed up shortly after this and sat beside me. He could see I was a bit disturbed and I filled him in on the story. We both sat with our feet in hot water for a while and then the girls came in to do our massage.
The girls spent at least 5 more minutes trying to convince us to pay only 20 yuan more for a full body massage. We were definitely not going to experience this here. We had to keep insisting on the foot massage only. The staff here just won't give up. The girls looked kind of like cheap prostitutes. They had a lot of makeup on and short little skirts and tights on their legs. Jack and I discussed later that he may have got more than a massage if he had gone to the private room for the full body treatment. While they massaged our feet they turned the t.v. on that was in the room and had it blaring at an awful volume.
They motioned to the remote for us to change channels. All we did was press the mute button. They just don't seem to get the idea of peace and quiet here. The massage was not that good, we couldn't wait to get out of there. On top of the cruddy massage, the girls just sat there yapping to each other the whole time, mostly looking at one of us and then saying something. I rolled my eyes one time and looked at Jack. Then the one girl that could speak a bit of English, sputtered out do you speak Chinese? She was obviously concerned that we knew they were talking about us. After I said no the conversation between them continued in full force. Now that I think back I should have said yes we could speak a few words to at least keep them guessing as to what we could understand.
We witnessed some interesting stuff here while walking around the city. We noticed that some people like to walk around with a wad of kleenex hanging out of their nose. We are not sure what this is about. For the most part people did not stare as much at us here. Maybe they are used to seeing foreigners. We did however have a guy in a truck hold back an entire lane of traffic when the light had turned green at the intersection. He just sat there gawking at us as we waited to cross the street. Soon all the cars behind him were honking up a storm. He still paused for a few more seconds to take a look. We just don't get it, do we really look that different?
At another major road we saw a girl sitting in a lane of traffic and her boyfriend standing beside her. Cars were swerving around her and honking, we could barely look as we thought she was going to get killed. It seemed her and the boyfriend had a fight and she plunked herself down and was refusing to move. He kept grabbing her arms and trying to pull her up, but she stayed firm. The most bizarre part of all this is only about 10 meters away two police officers were sitting and watching the whole incident along with everyone else. You would think they would get out of the car and make her move for her own safety and everyone else driving down the road!
We didn't do much while we were in Kunming. It was just a time to catch up on laundry, get out to purchase some items we had run low on, and use it as a point to get to our next destination. One thing we read about that might be of interest here was a spot called the Stone Forest which is over 100km's out of Kunming. It is a unique set of jagged rocks that come out of the ground. It seemed like a long way to go and from what we could tell it would be full of tour groups brought in by buses. So we chose to skip it.
Next stop the small town of Ancient Dali.
Author: Audreyandjack Date: July 14, 2008 |