Travel Log 18

The bus I caught was heading to Jinghong. Luckily our bus driver changed the $35 worth of Lao Kip I had as past the border you can’t change Kip and it would have become worthless. I had decided to skip most of southern Yunnan as it is said that it is very similar to Laos and after almost 5 months in SE Asia I was keen to move further into China. So I caught an overnight bus to Kunming where I was to stay with Richard a work friend of Ben’s that is studying Chinese at Kunming Normal University. We arrived at 7 in the morning, unfortunately the day I arrived was very cold and I was only in my shorts and the warmest top I had was a hoody. I later found out that the day before I arrived had been 25 degrees but now that I had arrived the temperature had dropped a good 20 degrees. This and the altitude (1900m) caused me to come down with a high temperature and cold and I was house bound for two days. The illness meant that although I was in Kunming for 7 days I didn’t see a whole lot. It also meant that I didn’t go to some towns nearby(ish) but since it is the wrong time of year to see rice terraces I don’t think I missed much. In Kunming I did go to some parks and see the spectacle that goes on in so far all parks in Chinese cities. The parks in Chinese cities are where the middle aged and retired go to sing and dance … badly, it is quite a sight and quite amusing.

Richards Chinese was pretty good and this provided a little more freedom and during my time in Kunming we went out for some nice food. On Sunday I went to watch Richard play football and after seeing how terrible everyone was playing I thought I’d better help them out. So on I trotted and within about 10 minutes I score a peach right into the top right hand corner. Unfortunately later on I got lobbed as the last defender and the game ended up 2-all.

After my time at Richards I headed on a bus to Dali.