We're in Kunming for a few days now. We are staying at The Hump Hostel. Our lovely ensuite twin room is three pounds fifty per night each. We just had a delicious feast for under a fiver - at a restaurant called Le Gare du Sud round the corner. This indicates that we are now in former French influenced territory, and we had crispy fried local goats cheese - a local speciality; grilled aubergine; and roast shredded pork for Andy, all with a huge pile of egg fried rice and endless green tea. It was all delicious, and I think we will probably go back there tomorrow, as we think they undercharged us - only fair to let them make it up.
The journey from Guangzhou was pretty spectacular. Watching the lush tropical verdure, complete with banana plantations and traditional lumpy limestone hills, gradually retreat behind us as we climbed the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, was a delight. The line to Kunming was only completed a few years ago, and it seems to be mostly bridge or tunnel as it crosses and re-crosses huge river valleys and deep narrow gorges.
We woke up in the morning to find the lowland greenery and karst hills (this photo isn't mine unfortunately) replaced by dry scrub, rocky slopes, deep red earth and jewel blue sky. And many more tunnels. There were plenty of small cities on the flatter areas, some with traditional low brick housing on the edges, but mostly with an exploding array of appartment blocks in white and pink tiling. They abruptly end with fields of crops and the occasional mud coloured buffalo with magnificent horns browsing the field edges.
We arrived in a sunny Kunming in the afternoon, and eventually found our "off planet" hostel, which turns out to be completely central, and ideal. Today we wandered around the local market and bought some mandarins (tiny, like in 'tinned mandarin segments' but utterly fresh and delicious) and some aromatic longan. We also made our arrangements to get to Laos on Saturday, by overnight 'sleeper' bus (I'll get back to you on that one) to Luang Namtha, where we are booked into a local eco-lodge. A 25 hour international journey costing us 20 quid each.
Tomorrow we are going to look round the Muslim area, as Yunnan has a big Muslim population.
