Kunming:

March 20th, 2005

Greetings from China's Yunnan Province, located in the southwestern-most corner of China, just above Vietnam.

We arrived in Kunming, the capital city of the province, on Sunday after flying from Hanoi. We feared the worst after hearing various stories from other travellers about China, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise upon arrival.

The streets were clean and organized and no one hassled us like in India or SE Asia. The only major difficulty was adjusting from life at sea level in Vietnam to our new elevation of 1900m above sea level in Kunming!

The first word that comes to mind to describe China is BIG. Everything here is big. The streets are massive. The buildings are huge. The countryside even looks bigger than anywhere else we have been. And the highways are vast, cutting through mountains like they have no business being in the way! I should mention, too, that Kunming has a population of about 3.8 million people - big by our standards but small by Chinese standards.

We spent our initial day in Kunming arranging our flights to Tibet, which was much easier than anticipated. Foreigners need a permit to enter the Tibet Autonomous Region and obtaining that permit plus the air ticket was supposed to be a chore, but we found a local guy who specializes in that area of things and he took care of it all.

That meant it was time to outfit ourselves with some winter gear since we didn't bring any with us from home.

The shopping was amazing - more brands that we would find in Toronto - and the stores were huge. Again, BIG is the theme here.

We found a store that specialized in ski jackets. They had all the brand names - North Face, Mountain Hardwear, Sierra Designs, etc. The prices were about 3-4 times cheaper than back home.

We both ended up with Gore-Tex jackets from Mountain Hardwear and I also got a Gore Wind stopper fleece. We figured that would be fine to help us make it through the cooler days in Tibet.

We arrived here in Kunming this morning after taking the overnight train back from Dali.

The train was luxury compared to Indian trains. Things were organized, people took their assigned seats, the bedding was clean, and the beds were comfortable.

We were the only foreigners in our car, so a group of English teachers from Dali sat with us practicing English until the lights were switched off on the train. It was nice to be able to discuss the cultural differences between China and Canada (and America, of course).

We have the day here in Kunming to take care of some minor things and then we leave in the morning on a flight to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

We plan to spend two weeks in Tibet before heading back into mainland China and the homestretch of our journey.

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