A trip to Yunnan, China.

[buksida]

Shame tourist visas for China are such a ballache.

With the Macau Blue Card, it's fairly easy. A colleague of mine just went to apply for it yesterday. A lots of paper, yes but he will get it in four days, as I did, too.

Having to go to Bangkok to do biometrics for a tourist visa is an instant no for me, there are plenty of other countries to see without the bureaucratic bs. However, your pics do make a compelling case!

[pharvey]

Shame tourist visas for China are such a ballache.

With the Macau Blue Card, it's fairly easy. A colleague of mine just went to apply for it yesterday. A lots of paper, yes but he will get it in four days, as I did, too.

Having to go to Bangkok to do biometrics for a tourist visa is an instant no for me, there are plenty of other countries to see without the bureaucratic bs. However, your pics do make a compelling case!

Been, seen and done (with) China myself, but certainly not taking away from the places you've visited or your reports BG. There are certainly some beautiful places to visit, Lijiang being one of them! I truly am enjoying the reports and photo's - how did you get on with the food in the different places you visited?

[Bamboo Grove]

I am always easy with food, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Thai etc, I like them all.

[Bamboo Grove]

Kunming 2 and back to Macau

I had booked a car to take me to the railway station in the morning. The train from Lijiang to Kunmig took around 3 hours and I had booked the same hotel where I was previously. It was easy to find as I now knew my way there. Took my things to the hotel and I thought that there’d be enough time to visit the Western Hills.

Now I just needed to find the metro entrance. Several webpages didn’t mention it at all, one said that it was by the South square of the railway station but there was no direct connection there from the North square which was close to my hotel. So I started walking to find a way the the south side of the station. Again this was a long walk before I finally got there. I was thinking that I might need a taxi on my way back as I didn’t fancy another long walk.

It was too late for the Western Hills so I just went to have a look at the downtown area and the Nanping walking street. Neither were anything spectacular after Dali and Lijiang so after a short time, I returned to the hotel. I don’t know how I could have found my hotel easily on my first day of arrival because I had walked a long way to get to the metro station today. Now I decided to try the other direction than the one I had walked to the metro earlier today and actually this was only about 1 km to my hotel. So this is where I thought, it was good I took the taxi on my first night in Kunming. Finding my way to the hotel when I was already tired from walking might have taken a long time. A good lesson learnt here; use taxis in China.

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Returning to Macau

Nothing eventful for the last day. I knew my way to the metro station and got to the Kunming airport smoothly. The flight was 2,5 hours to Guangzhou, the metro trip from the airport, north of Guangzhou to the southern railway station, was 1,5 hours with maybe additional half an hour when I thought I might have time to have a look at a bookstore in Guangzhou but time was too short. Then an hour’s trip from Guangzhou to Zhuhai and after that across the border and a bus home in Macau.


Conclusions

Hotels

Hotels were in the price range of 20-35€ per night. Nothing too fancy but adequete. Choosing the locations is a bit difficult when you don’t know the place.

Transportation

I tried planes, trains and buses, everything was comfortable, even the long distance bus which in the late 80’s was anything but comfortable. I saw trafic jams only in Kunming, In Dali Ancient City there were only very few vehicles that were allowed to the streets. Some of the wider street had buses, vans and taxis but the smaller ones only small motobikes. Travelling by train in China nowadays is very nice, you can book the tickets online and no need to go anywhere to queue for a paper ticket. You just show your passport when entering the station and the reader tells the inspector that you have a ticket.

Food

Food in China is good and cheap, of course you can pay a lot if you choose a fancier restaurant but in basic places you can eat with 2-5 Euros.

Weather

It was winter time and so the nights were just above zero C. Daytime it was anything between 10-17 C in Yunnan. Particulary my room in the B&B in Dali was cold but luckily the matress was an electric one and kept me warm throughout the night.

My next plan is to visit Zhangjiajie (also called the Avatar-mountains) in Hunan in March-April when we have a week’s holiday between the 2nd and 3rd terms.

The three places in Yunnan province.

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[buksida]

Great report and pics, enjoyable reading about somewhere new. You mentioned a lot of walking, we did the same in Japan and Korea - up to 15km on some days. Its a great way to stay fit and seen new stuff on the way.

Its a shame you can't walk anywhere in Thailand, its either too damn hot, there are no sidewalks out of the capital city, and everything on the road is trying to run you down!

[Bamboo Grove]

You mentioned a lot of walking, we did the same in Japan and Korea - up to 15km on some days. Its a great way to stay fit and seen new stuff on the way.

Yes, it is a great way, you see so much more than just from the windows of a car.

During those 9 days, I walked altogether 107,8 kilometers, which is an average of close to 12 km per day.

I've actually done quite a lot of walking since moving to Macau, I try to walk at least 4 km every day but weekends I usually do something like 5-7 km on both days.

[wenshidi]

I thought it was a bit cheeky complaining about the flagstones of the thousand year old tea horse trail, especially compared with what HH has to offer.

Thank you for taking the time to post. Sorry that it was a bit of a struggle at times, but I can recommend a few good guide books that make things much easier. I was lucky enough to live in all three of those locations over the years, and it is well worth getting off the beaten path in these amazing locations.