Kunming and the Stone Forest

Sunday morning we woke up early to fly to Kunming. It was strange flying back down there less than a week after I had already been through there. Kunming is supposed to be "spring all year" and have blue skies, however we only had a blue sky one day, and that was the only blue sky we saw while Kurt was in China. The taxis in China are pretty cool. Instead of having some long confusing number to identify taxis, they each have an animal (picture and name) and a number. For example our taxi from the airport was Cow 76 and our taxi to the Stone Forest was Butterfly 32. I think it is a great system and is also fun. We were trying to see how many animals there are, and there are quite a lot.

We got to our hotel, got ourselves together and then went in search of food. This is where you may lose all respect for me. We went to Pizza Hut. Yes, I admit it, our first meal in Kunming was at Pizza Hut. We were really hungry and it happened to be on a corner of our building. I remembered Pizza Hut in Cairo was quite different from Pizza Hut in the states, so I figured why not try. It was really good and the funny thing is that it is like a really restaurant in China and has much nicer decor than a Pizza Hut in the states.

Unfortunately it was raining on our first day there, but we decided to go for a walk anyway. We figured we could buy umbrellas somewhere on the way to the Green Lake, but we could not find any. We went to the lake anyway and found a little amusement park with all kinds of games and rides for small kids. After the park we were pretty much soaked, so we headed back to the hotel. A couple blocks away we finally found umbrellas, oy!

Our second day in Kunming we walked to Dian Chi Lake. On our way we passed by the West and East Pagodas. The East Pagoda had these beautiful fuschia flowers all over the place. It was quite a long walk to Dian Chi Lake and involved us walking on part of a highway where we were laughed at by almost every car that drove by us. The park was really pretty and the ponds in the park were a ridiculous shade of green. It looked like they were filled with some sort of neon olive green paint. We were quite stupid and did not wear sunblock on the one blue sky day we had. Unfortunately we both burned. That night we met up with Adina (she went on the Fulbright trip to Lijiang) who was hanging out in Kunming until her boyfriend came to visit. We went to this great Mexican restaurant (go figure) and I had a tasty pesto quesadillas!

Our last day in Kunming we hired a taxi to take us to the Stone Forest. I don't like how cities claim to have all of these big sights, and then when you get there, the sight is really two or three hours away. The frustrating thing is, I know there are buses you can take to the Stone Forest but with my minimal Chinese abilities I did not want to risk going somewhere else by accident. The traffic was so bad getting out of the city that at one point cars were backing up to get off of the highway.

The Stone Forest was really interesting but you have to go through a lot of touristy stuff and masses of people before you can get to the good stuff. It was so ridiculously crowded but we did manage to find some areas that were not as populated. We did not have a map, so we had a bit of a hard time finding our way out when we wanted to leave, but eventually found these Chinese girls who wanted to practice there English on us. When Kurt said he was from NY they said "It must be a beautiful place." They were really cool and giggly. They could have been making fun of us for all I know, but they sort of helped us find our way out.

On our way back to Kunming we were stuck in really bad traffic and it turned out a huge truck full of coal(?) had turned over and was blocking cars from going forward. I have no clue if anyone was hurt. We had to drive around the truck and it did not look good.

The following morning we had breakfast and then caught our flight to Shanghai.