We took the overnight train (K9620) from Dali to Kunming, leaving Dali at just turned 10pm and arriving in Kunming at a time of day my body doesn’t really believe exists. The train was fine, straight on the train and to bed. Previous experience had told us the lights usually go out around 10pm on overnight trains in China. We met a Chinese guy who spoke good English and had a chat with him about his travels around Asia and Europe. Then it was lights out and to sleep. The train arrived late, almost 6am, but that doesn’t stop the conductor waking everyone up at as if the train was on time. Annoying, I could have had another 20 mins in bed. The Hump Hostel isn’t far from the train station but buses are annoying with large rucksacks (plus we didn’t see many at that time) and the taxi is only 12 Yuan (£1.20), so we headed for the taxi rank. Well, the taxi drivers loved the sight of two English backpackers arriving at that time of day and immediately pounced. Offers were flying in from all directions; because the majority of Chinese people don’t speak English they use their fingers to show the price, the number of fingers is often the number of tens, so Annemarie was thinking they were haggling and undercutting each other, offering taxi ride for 4 Yuan. Oh no, 40 Yuan was the price they were asking, one guy offered his taxi for a whopping 100 Yuan. Once we realised that we told them where to stick their taxis and got out. On the street was no better. We flagged down three taxis, told them where we wanted to go and then requested the meter was turned on. All gave a dismissive wave of the hand and drove off. So we walked to the hostel, about a 40 minute walk. That set my mood for the morning. The roads were almost empty and there are only two roads to take to get from the station to the hostel, in a taxi that would have been 5 minutes each way. But none of the drivers thought it was worth their while to get a little cash on a quick drop off. The law should force the use of meters (it might already and most break the law). Walking down the road was fun. Street lights are few and far between and the main road in undergoing a huge resurfacing. The path is also been relaid, but that isn’t complete meaning there were huge holes in the pavement which you have to avoid, in other places...

As I have stated in a few other posts, the Chinese drivers have no concept of a highway code. Cars will often go through red lights, they will drive at you when you’re crossing with the green man on and they sometimes use the footpath. But even worse are the mopeds. They use the footpath, go the wrong way, ignore red lights, use pedestrian crossings and basically ignore every single rule in the book. Here is a video I took of a footpath at rush hour in Kunming: Crazy Footpath I then walked into that scrum and almost got killed when a bike came up the left of me: Kunming Footpath Posted from Lijiang, Yunnan,...

We took the K9618 from Kunming railway station to Lijiang. It left Kunming at 10am and arrived (on time) at Lijiang at 18:55. We had 9 hours in what is deemed hard seats. 89 Yuan each (£9). Not bad for covering 300 miles. Timetable of K9618 – Kunming – Lijiang. The strange thing was instead of getting seats we got the same sleeper carriage as we had for the overnight from Beijing. But this time everyone sat on the lower bunk and used the upper bunks for storage. It was a bit cramped and quite noisy but not bad. The only issue is the name hard seat, it ain’t kidding. After 9 hours (maybe even after the first) our backsides were numb and it was starting to hurt. I’m glad I listened to Annemarie as I was going to pick these for the 36 hours from Beijing to Kunming, that would have been agony! The scenery was very good...

Since arriving in China finding really nice food has been harder than expected. This is for a number of reasons, mainly our reluctance to eat different parts of the animal, eat different animals (especially when it comes to seafood), try many of the sauces and also eat in places which don’t have a menu with pictures. We did try to order in a restaurant yesterday which didn’t have pictures in the menu. That was a total failure and what we ended up with was not nice at all. But today that changed. We finally went into a restaurant which had some very nice looking food. It also had pineapple rice, which came in a pineapple. The rice was cooked inside the pineapple which had been hollowed out. Sine wild rice, normal rice and something to give it a pink color. It might have been a dessert but we ate it with our main anyway. The rest of the meal was good too. Nice cuts of beef in a really good sauce. Plenty of chillies too, but they had s good flavor and weren’t too hot. In fact most of the chilli dishes have been OK until we drink the tea, that makes it burn. Posted from Kunming, Yunnan,...

After a few days of resting and planning today we decided we would walk to Golden Temple Park. We knew it would be a good distance but the buses just seem like s huge hassle here and aren’t much quicker. After a couple of hours walking we reached the park. The park had a huge entrance and ticket booths. Tickets to walk in a park, well I suppose there are a few parks and estates that you pay to walk around so that’s fine. The price at the ticket booth was 150 Yuan each. To put that in context a meal for two with drinks in a reasonable restaurant around here costs us about 80 Yuan. So this park was 4 times the price of an evening meal for two! £30 to enter the park was just too much, so we decided to walk around the edge, maybe we could see the golden temple from the side. Well… We walked quite some distance around the side but got no view of the temple and no way to enter without paying the huge fee. On the plus side we had a long walk which we needed to start building some muscle and acclimatise to walking at this altitude. In a few days we have to walk Tiger Leaping Gorge which is going to be tough and is probably another 500m higher than here. Another plus was this: On the way back we saw a small vendor selling fried potatoes. They looked so good we just had buy some. 4 Yuan (40p) bought us the best food we have eaten on this trip so far. Fried baby potatoes, dried chillies, coriander and something like paprika, mixed with a touch of water. Delicious and so simple. Our hostel tells us to save water (generally a good idea anyway) as there are sometimes water shortages in Yunnan and the water supply is cutoff. The water shortages are probably caused by these trucks: Which spray the roads with water. The roads around here do seem to get very dusty and the water will help, but just wetting the road is a bit extreme. A few days ago one of these trucks was driving up Beijing Road in Kunming spraying at full pelt, luckily the driver used the horn lots and we saw it coming, but we still had to run quite far and fast to avoid getting soaked as we walked down the side of the road. Speaking of water – today we drank 7 0.5L bottles of water. Luckily a bottle can be bought for 1 Yuan (10p). Slightly worried about water supply...