A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
I spent today wandering around Kunming and managed to see practically nothing. In the morning I strolled over to the Bird and Flower Market, which was extraordinarily difficult to find, as the dot on the map was in the wrong place. Once found, it wasn't too exciting. Birds, flowers, and zillions of other consumer goods without listed prices.

It did give me a good workout, however, as it was a long damn walk. The blocks of this city are about 300 yards long, so the distances on the map are very deceptive. The city of Kunming is almost entirely new, as the Chinese have no compunction abkht tearing down old and/or historic buildings in the name of "progress". There are some benefits to this strategy, however. When you dont have to work around existing buildings, you can really go to town on the urban planning. Consequently, Kunming is very well laid out, with wide avenues, a ring road so traffic can bypass the central district, special bus lanes, and huge bike lanes on both sides of each road. Traffic moves incredibly efficiently here. It helps too that there are no sneaky motorbikes to gum up the works.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the only thing that separates downtown Kunming from any western city is the chinese writing on the signs. There's obviously a ton of money here, and judging by the most prevalent businesses, residents like to buy shoes and do their banking. There are an astronomical number of banks here, of every conceivable type: city, state, national, commercial, agricultural, construction, communications, development, and industrial banks, to name a few. And they're each housed in a skyscraper. I have no idea how they can do so much banking, particularly since I hear that not only do Chinese banks not allow you to take money out on an international Visa or ATM card (only Chinese cards allowed), but regular Chinese customers can't even take money out of another branch of their own bank. All transactions must be done at the branch at which the account was opened. Not exactly convenient, is it?

In addition to shoes and banking, the locals also seem to love clothese, and they're very well dressed here. The whole downtown area just screams prosperity -- immaculately clean, lots of trees and lovely landscaping, and a vibrant shopping scene. Too bad I hate shopping. I did manage to make a giant purchase today -- bought a watch for a little under two dollars. Hope it lasts the length of the trip, at least.

After checking out the hotel, storing my bags (I'm taking a night train to Dali at 11:15 pm), and piddling around on the internet for an hour, I decided to head to the Bamboo Temple, which came highly recommended in both my guidebooks. Sadly, the Bamboo Temple was the first casualty of my inability to communicate in Chinese. I followed the directions to the letter. I got on the #5 bus from my hotel, and successfully located the Yunnan Hotel, which supposedly ran shuttle buses to the temple. The folks at the Yunnan appeared to be utterly unaware of this service, however, and after a bit of effort, they told me I could get there on the #5 bus I had just gotten off.

It appears there may have been something lost in the translation, as it were. Not long after I boarded the #5 bus for the second time, we began to go drastically off course, pursuing a meandering route all around the city. After 50 minutes, I was back where I started, and since by then it was after 4pm, I wrote the temple off and headed to McDonalds for a late lunch. Yes, I know it's terrible and cliche to go to McDonalds, but I haven't seen one in six months! Sadly, they're not too into quarter-pounders here. The only meat options they offer are the Big Mac and some burger with a nausea-inducing egg on top. No cheeseburgers, even. So I had the chicken McNuggets, which sucked, and fries, which rocked.

That was my day. And you can thank the fact that I have many many hours to kill before this damned train departs for the excruciating detail in which it was related.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 4:36 AM