Kunming, Yunnan, China










Getting to Kunming was a bit of a journey, even if it appears quite close on the map. We had to take a 6 hour bus ride to Nanning before taking a cab across town and running to the 15 hour train to Kunming. It was a hard-sleeper, which meant we had a board with some mild padding on it. Unfortunately, the only tickets left were the top bunk. This was out of a stack of 3, which meant we had our faces planted in the ceiling with not enough room to sit up. Klotz likened it to sleeping in a refrigerator. It was a really nice train, as far as sleepers go, it was just a long day of non-stop traveling and we were getting a bit weary of it all. Kunming has a really nice atmosphere and the people are really friendly. It is also really developed. We walked all around the city taking in the sights. We unfortunately made it to the Kunming zoo. I wont go into too much detail here, but Sophie and I were brought to tears at the state of some of the animals. oh well, different culture, different values, I just don't think westerners should support it like we unknowingly did. There were several (possibly) old chinese gates. They were so popular to visit that they were now surrounded by KFCs and McDonalds' and the like. We had previosly planned a possible dip into Vietnam when we were in this area. We decided to go a bit further and fly down to Thailand for a couple weeks. China is really large and we don't want to spend our entire vacation in vehicles. It is also blowing our budget quite hard. Whatever, Thailand will be more fun...and cheap. that's why we don't make too solid of plans, in case we want to change gears.