There are a lot of tourist shops selling jewelry and traditional clothing. They also had paramilitary gear for some reason. You can get fake North Face shells with fleece for about 500 RMB and a fake Windstopper jacket for 200 RMB as elsewhere in China.
Dali is a small walled city. There were quite a few Chinese tourists there. It is pretty at night with the neon lights. Yes, it is sort of tacky too.
From Kunming, I took a minibus to Xiaguan (4.5 hours). The hotels charge 103 RMB, but I went to the long distance bus station and bought a ticket for 64 RMB. Passengers are allowed to smoke on these small buses, so it was good to have an open window from time to time. Today the weather was overcast with drizzle, and the temperature dropped. It was a good thing I had bought a fleece sweater in Kunming. From Xiaguan, I took city bus number 4 to Dali (1 RMB).
This is one of the dishes that Kunming is famous for. You have a steaming bowl of broth and several ingredients on plates. I didn't like the noodles so much since they were like overcooked spaghetti.
I bought a fleece jacket here and had some great food at their deli counter. They had awesome Chinese food that was cheaper than outside, if you can believe that! I don't know how they do that when their overhead is so much larger than a street cart vendor. I spent a couple hours in this four-level tower of capitalism.
The air quality was excellent in Kunming; the sky was blue most of the days. The altitude probably helps, but so do these electric scooters. The buses are hybrids too as they are quiet when they pull up to a stop and have to be re-started when they go. These scooters are quiet, and they can easily sneak up on you on the sidewalk.
This is the capital of the Yunnan province with a population of 3.9 million (almost as many people here as all of New Zealand!) at an elevation of 6000 ft (1900 meters). It is a pretty city with a small river and wide clean streets and at nights, the buildings are lit up wonderfully. There wasn't much to do in Kunming, but I stayed at a nice hostel at Camellia Hotel for only 30 RMB a night. An added bonus was that there was a Walmart (yes, a Walmart) a couple blocks away.
The cup-o-noodles come in huge servings in China and cost about 30 cents. So common is this snack in China that they have hot water dispensers everywhere.
I have been drinking this orange drink (like Sunny Delight) all week.
The hard sleepers are pretty good. They have a thin mattress (but comfortable enough), and they provide linen. There is no door between the bunks and the walkway, so they turn off the lights at 10 pm. The track from Nanning to Kunming (which, apparently, I have been misspelling as "Kumming") was bored through a mountain range, so it appears as a straight line on the map. I woke up sometime in the morning, in the dark, and after a few minutes, we came out of a tunnel and it was bright outside. We had been in the tunnel all morning.
The hard sleeper bunks are stacked three to a wall. I was on top.
This warning placard at the train station forbade the possession of cobras, among other things.
From Yangshuo, I headed to Kunming. I bought an overnight sleeper train ticket for about 236 RMB. If you don't buy it from the train station, you will get charged about 60 RMB in commission from a ticketting agency -- ouch! The total travel time from Yangshuo to Kunming was 23 hours. This was the crush of folks lining up to race to the train platform.
There are a few claypot rice places in Yangshuo. They have small claypots in which they cook rice (it comes out a little different than normal rice). You also get to pick a bunch of different ingredients and they will stirfry it all together (like a Mongolian plate, or whatever they call it, back in the States). It's awesome.
Xi Jie is the main tourist pedestrian street in Yangshuo. With the national holiday, the crowds were huge. It was like being in Beijing.
There was thunder in the air, and minutes later I had to seek shelter under the archway from the pelting rain. The cool weather that came with it was a nice change from the humidity and the heat.
Moon Hill is about a 40 minute ride south of Yangshuo. I hiked to the bottom of the archway. It wasn't too hard, as there were stone steps leading the way to the top. There were a few bolted climbs under the arch. It takes about 45 minutes to get there. Lots of old ladies are selling water on the way.
Hordes or tourists hop on bamboo rafts to ride down the river. I am sure this is nicer when there are fewer people. How come those Chinese watercolor scrolls never had colorful umbrellas and tourists painted in?
Like rafting places in the States, but instead of transporting inflatable rafts, they're using bamboo ones.
Clockwise from the top: Beer fish, stuffed eggplant and peppers, and snails. The snails had little eggs sacks which I have never encountered before, and, quite frankly, made me feel ill. In the sacks were small snail shells -- crunch, crunch, spit .
The beer fish is a local speciality.
Yangshuo is a big backpacker place. They even have a couple hostels that are part of the International Youth Hostel Association. I stayed in the Yangshuo IYH for my first night. With the weeklong holiday, getting cheap dorm rooms was tougher, but definitely possible. The prices were all doubled and even tripled.
There are guided rock climbs in the surrounding area and even a small rock gym in Yangshuo. There are loads of outdoor stores selling North Face and Mountain Hardwear gear (pirated, of course), for 1/8th of the price in the States.
I've never seen this before: plastic-sealed porcelein in a restaurant. I guess this is supposed to make me think that it's clean.
Through the haze, you can make out the pretty karsts around Guilin.
Guilin is no small town either. The streets are modern and broad. Look at the modern air pollution.
I arrived in Nanning around 5pm (I lost an hour when I crossed borders). I wa able to get on a bus to Guilin (88 RMB) which took six hours. Nanning is a large modern city. We took a freeway all the way to Guilin. The bus attendant gave me a bottle of water and even a can of cooked sweet beans to snack on.
This was a pretty town surrounded by karsts, but it was just a stopping point for me to get to somewhere else. You can take a train or a bus to Nanning (there are no buses to Guilin), the capital of the province. The train costs 30 RMB and the bus costs either 30 or 50 RMB depending on the class. The train leaves in the afternoon, but the buses leave every 30 minutes or so. I took a bus (50 RMB) to Nanning (5 hours) which crossed over dirt roads (they're constructing a highway, but it's not complete). If it is raining, it takes much longer.
Instead of seeing thatched huts on the country roads, the homes are made of brick. I guess that's different from SE Asia.
In Dong Dang, I had to switch to a taxi cab (but didn't have to pay for it) to get to the border. The two passport controls are about 400 meters apart. There are no ATMs or official money exchangers here, and both the Vietnamese Dong and Chinese Reminbi aren't widely traded, so I had to find blackmarket money changers. When I was entering the Chinese passport control, a guy selling dutyfree items asked me if I wanted to exchange money. At first he wanted to sell 1 RMB for 2200 Dong, which was well above the official 1 RMB to 1959 Dong exchange rate. I was able to bargain him down to 1 RMB to 2000 Dong.
On the Chinese side, a lady ran up to be with a calculator asking if I needed to exchange money.
There are no buses at the border in China, so you have to hire a cab to get to Pingxiang. I was able to get one for 30 RMB.
Hanoi sits on the Red River, which, like the Mekong in the south, is a source of much of the north's food.
I had to get up early for my minibus to the border. Vendors lined the streets selling produce and meats.
The streets in Hanoi are named after the things that you could buy on them a hundred years ago. The streets are still selling some of the same items. You will find a street block where they are selling Buddhist shrines, ghost money, ironworks, tin boxes, clothes, shoes, et cetera. The Lonely Planet guidebook makes a big deal of this and even has a "walking city tour" that you can do, but actually, this city planning is not unique to Hanoi and can be found in many Asian cities, including in Taiwan.
