Kunming

I'm almost off on my next adventure, and I still haven't finished writing about the last one!

I got off the flight at Kunming and walked around for about 30 minutes trying to find a bus. Nothing. I then lined up for a taxi and managed to keep the line-pusher-inners at bay. When my taxi arrived, I handed him my travel book and pointed to where I wanted to go. He had to ask for directions from the nearest guard, but still didn't really know where I was meant to go.

I was dropped off on a street, got out my map and compass, and tried to figure out where I had to go. I stopped for a while under a streetlight until a man with a machine gun told me to move on. Apparently one isn't allowed to loiter outside a military compound. Eventually a kind local soul on a bicycle spotted me, and escorted me to the hostel (quite near where the taxi dropped me off, of course). He was a teacher in the local school just down the road from the hostel.

Checked in, washed up, went to the bar. I got chatting, and tried to figure out what I should get up to. I decided to go to a few temples, and parks.

The next day I packed up a bunch of stuff, mostly things like old maps and my telephone, and posted it back home (it arrived in Perth the same day I did). Then I went exploring. Kunming is a big city.

Green lake (nice), Yauntong temple, some restaurant that served 'cross the bridge' noodle soup (OK I guess), bird markets, and the old city centre. That was a lot of walking, but well worth it. There were a couple of shopping malls with awesome names like 'splendid' and 'brilliant', with the odd interspersed old medieval gates.

The next day I decided to venture to the attractions outside the city, namely the Bamboo Temple, and the Golden Temple Park. Getting to the Bamboo Temple was explained to me by the hostel staff, and I had a map with directions drawn on it. However, things did not go as planned.

I got off at where my instructions said I should, but there was no connecting minibus going anywhere near where I wanted to go. Some domestic tourists seemed to have the same idea as me, and I followed them up the road (a very, very busy road, underneath a very, very large underpass), until I missed them. Random taxis and motorbikes kept hassling me to take a ride with them, but I finally managed to track down a minibus that was going to the Bamboo Temple.

The Bamboo Temple is famous because it has a set of lifelike figurines. Apparently some monk went a little overboard, and made a lot of very intricate figurines, and to be honest they were very impressive. However, the rest of the temple has little else going for it. I then managed to hail down a minibus coming back the other way, but by the time I got into Kunming proper it was too late to go to the Golden Temple Park.

The next day I resolved to go to the Golden Temple park, and the Western Hills. Of course, the Golden Temple Park is massive, so I only managed to do that, and even then only just finished before nightfall. A great park, with a beautiful temple, and many, many sightseeing walks. It also has a large tower with a great view over Kunming (not a pretty city from up high).

When I got back to my hostel, the words of a domestic tourist in Yangshuo came back to me. The May festival was coming, and it would be hell to get around. I decided to get the hell out of Kunming, and go wait it out in Dali. A few buses, a runaround by a couple of girls, and an amazingly crowded minibus later, and I was in the old town of Dali, and it was good.

Pics!