So this year, instead of being locked out of my apartment and then having to spend the next 3 days guarding the apartment because the locksmith had to break the handle off of the door, I decided to spend it visiting a friend in Kunming. His name is Ryan, and we both used to work for the same school back in Hangzhou. I had heard from him that Kunming has great weather and air and is in fact referred to as the “city of eternal spring.” As soon as I arrived, I realized that this title was well-suited. The entire time I was there, the skies were blue and the temperature was in the mid to upper 60’s F (18–20 C). The only time we experienced cold or wet weather was in Dali. My stay was a bit complicated by the fact that he had gotten a cat since the last time I saw him, and I am allergic to cats. Anyway, without further adieu, here was my trip.

On my way to the airport, the bus that I bought a ticket for apparently miscounted and sold one too many tickets. While I stood outside of the bus for 10 minutes with the driver and the ticket seller trying to figure out what to do, I kept wondering why they didn’t just let me sit in the single passenger seat that sits right above the steps into the bus. Eventually, the ticket seller notified me that the person she spoke to had suggested that I do that very thing. Great. Luckily, the ride only took about 45 minutes due to traveling on the eve of Chinese New Year and everyone else having already traveled back to their homes.

Later at the airport, I saw a sign for one of the food places near my gate. I noticed the sign had a slight misspelling. Oh well, no harm, no foul.

Day 1

The first day, Ryan and I decided to go to a lake and mountain area called “Western Hills.” We walked along the path towards the mountain and took a cable car up part of the way.

I forgot to mention that later that evening, we decided to make dumplings with eggs and scallions. He also made some home-made kimchi-esque fermented cabbage with chili peppers. Ryan lives in an old apartment complex where the people there enjoyed setting off a lot of fire crackers. At one point, someone set them off right outside of our doorway on the landing. The sound scared us, and it sounded like it was actually inside the apartment. We could also smell the aftermath.

Day 2

Since the evening with dumplings went well, we decided to start off the morning with more. This time we made sweet apple cinnamon dumplings. He also decided to utilize some mint that he had as part of the sweet sauce. The dumplings were good, though a bit too sweet for my taste.

Day 3

On day 3, we decided to take a stroll through Green Lake, which Ryan described as a bit like Hangzhou’s “West Lake.” I had to disagree, lol. It was okay, but there were too many people. We wanted to rent a paddle boat, but once again we ran into the wonderful, efficient, and customer service-oriented workers that China is just full of (this sentence is dripping with sarcasm, FYI) and decided to forgo that and just keep walking around. We admired the birds around the lake and tasted some snacks.

Here there is also a military museum that was once a training academy.

Before we left, we also tried some spicy fries.

Day 4

On day 3, we finally made it out to a site known as “Stone Forest.” We got a late start, and once we arrived, the crowds were immense. It was confusing to figure out where to go to actually find the path towards the first exhibit. We ended up paying a lot just to enter the place and utilize the shuttle service. But once we got that straightened out, we went on our way. Luckily, the actual stone pieces were interesting and made the trip worth it.

Day 5

Ryan had convinced me that it would be great if we went to a town called Dali. He said that he went last year, that there was hardly anyone there, and that he thought it was beautiful and interesting. He also said that the bus driver had asked the passengers if they wanted to each pay an extra 2RMB so that he could take a different route and pay a toll to get to Dali in 4 hours. The whole bus agreed, and they were able to get to Dali more quickly.

Well, of course, when we headed out, none of this proved to be true this year. The bus ride there took 6 hours; it took us forever to figure out where to walk to the correct bus waiting area, then the bus took a good 15-20 minutes just to show up to take us down the road into the area of our guest house. Because the traffic was so bad, the bus couldn’t even get down the road and had to let everyone off to walk for the last part. There were tons of people here this year. After we got checked into our room, we walked around to see what there was to do. For some reason, I had sharp shooting pains in my stomach from about 5 p.m. until I went to sleep just after 11 p.m., so this really put a damper on what I could do and eat. This was the only time when the weather was cold and wet too. We walked towards the pier, but that didn’t provide much for us to do at that point. The only thing we managed to find to do was go to a bar to watch some Chinese musicians who played a mix of Spanish guitar-sounding music with Chinese lyrics. I captured some footage of it. You can see the video I took below.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/hk6DMRaNe7M]

[youtube=http://youtu.be/vTGNvXFhgA8]

The next day, the weather was better (though still cold at first). We decided to take a boat ride to one of the islands where some native locals live.

The boat came back and took us over to another area, but Ryan and I just weren’t in the mood to pay money to see anything there, so we stayed on the boat and headed back to shore. When we got off, I remembered that there were other food and snack stands along the pier, and I wanted to get some photos.

When we went back to check out of the guest house, the manager’s dog was chewing on its rags, and I eagerly tried to get Ryan to play tug of war with him. He took quite a liking to Ryan, and he even waited for him to get out of the bathroom.

Before we left, we decided to walk through the main part of the old city area. Unfortunately, the crowds and rather typical tourist shops made this a lackluster experience. I also didn’t get to eat much traditional Yunnan food, but we did manage to get some of their fried goat cheese on a stick. And who doesn’t love cheese, especially if it’s on a stick?

If the bus ride here was overly long, then the ride back would be infinitely worse. This time, it took 8.5 hours to make it back. This included taking a side route off the main highway to avoid traffic jams (we figured, anyway), but this also included experiencing extremely bumpy roads with massive pot holes and rough terrain through little village areas. After we finally got off the bus, we had a hell of a time trying to get a cab. Taxi drivers in China seem to try to get away with overcharging foreigners. There are also drivers who just don’t feel like going to where we need to go. After we got home, I decided that this would be the last time that I traveled anywhere in China during any of their holidays. There are always crowds in China, and the holidays are just awful for that. Ryan also commented that China really needs to figure out what to do about the increasing number of people getting cars because the country simply cannot handle more and more cars on the roads with such dense populations.

The rest of the time in Kunming was spent watching some old black-and-white movies, getting some groceries, and playing some badminton (where I received my second sunburn—the first was at the Stone Forest).

Over all, my trip to Kunming was good, but I’m not too eager to return to Dali. It was nice, however, to experience the sunny weather and much cleaner air.