What we did: Bird and Flower market in Kunming and overnight train to Guilin
Budget: 450 Yuan/$75; Spent: 265 Yuan/$44.17
Patty here.
We started our morning with a really nice breakfast from our hostel. I ordered the Veggie breakfast and Jeff had the American breakfast. Both came with 2 over-medium eggs and toast. Jeff’s had sausage and bacon, and mine had grilled tomato, mushrooms, and cornflakes. They really can make a decent breakfast here in China. It was a great deal too, 40Yuan ($7) for both and the coffees came free. After breakfast we caught up with Jeff’s brother Chris on Skype. He gave us some handy advice for India. After saying bye to Chris, we Skyped my parents (face to face) and chatted for a while. This made my day. I even got to say hello to Pacolino, my precious Chihuahua back at home. I think his ears may have even perked up a bit when he heard my voice… but that may just have been wishful thinking. It was a really nice start to the day.
After all that it was lunch time and we still hadn’t left the hostel. We decided to figure out how to get to the market in Kunming while we ate a small punch. We ended up sharing a strawberry smoothie and some fruit, yogurt muesli mixture which was enough to keep us going til dinner. We checked our luggage at the hostel, checked out of our room and off we went to the Bird and Flower market in search of the famous tea from Yunnan province called Pu’er. Studies suggest it has many health benefits and aids in weight loss and has anti-inflammatory properties. Not sure if the studies show conclusive evidence, but I guess there’s not a lot we are sure about with respect to nutrition and/or Chinese medicine.
We made our way to the Bird and Flower market which back in the day used to primarily sell those two things: birds and flowers. Well today, it hardly sells any flowers or birds, but rather many knick-knacks and antiques. It was a really cute street, and so much tamer than the markets in Northern China. Jeff and I are quickly beginning to grow much fonder of southern China, as opposed to Northern China from our experiences. We roamed around for a while and came across a lady who was selling what looked like tea. In China, it is sooo difficult to communicate with locals. I have tried several times to use our lonely planet book to say things in Mandarin, and the pronunciation is never good enough. Their 4 tones make it nearly impossible to say a single word! This was very unlike Japan, where it was so easy to pronounce the words in Japanese. It has been quite frustrating trying to communicate in China. But in this case, I managed to explain to this lady that we were looking for Pu’er tea. And she kindly led us to a vendor who was selling blocks of it. This was so kind of her, because she could have easily sold us whatever tea she had and said here’s Pu’er tea, but she actually led us somewhere else which I guess we have to assume was the right place. The vendor at the new place smiled and brought out a block and asked for 50Yuan for it. We countered with 30Y and were declined. We smiled and then said 40Y and he gave in. So, that was a success. After that, we went into Zara and looked around at their selection. We found nothing. Their selection was either way too dressy or simply impractical for our trip. Interestingly their prices seemed to be slightly better in Kunming than in Ottawa.
We have decided that next time we do some extensive travelling we will be better dressed! Luckily, the locals in China have been much more modest than the Japanese and although they stare at foreigners a lot, it’s harmless and not in condescending way. China has certainly grown us in the past few weeks. We laugh about it a lot, because if it weren’t for Dale’s advice to head south, we likely would have disliked China. And, funny that Dale even said that if we were to stick to the coast or near the coast of China for our itinerary, we would have likely been unimpressed with the country. So, we have been fortunate so far to have experienced a wider breadth of the culture and the nation.
After Zara, we began looking for a supermarket to find a lufa sponge, a razor, and some snacks for the train. Fortunately because our hostel was in such an unbelievably fun and practical location, we found one in no time at all and were in and out and back at our hostel for dinner. We got another great deal on a meal from our hostel for 38Y. It included 2 main Chinese dishes, soup, rice, and springrolls. It was tasty, cheap, and satisfying. Perfect. And we were right on schedule to leave from our train at 4:30pm. We got our luggage and off we went to catch our train to Guilin. We caught the bus about 100 meters from our hostel and kept our eyes peeled for our stop. We eventually saw the street and the station with no issues at all. We walked through security, and before we knew it we were sitting in the gate waiting for our train to leave. We watched three kids running around the hordes of people weaving through the aisles of seats having a great time. We missed being kids for a little while. How fun it is to have no cares in the world.
A deaf lady came up to us while we were seated in the station and asked for a donation to some kind of charity. We declined because we just have no idea where our money would actually be going. She was very nice and kept smiling and asking, and finally she walked away. We saw her approach two other guys who looked at her and immediately turned away without giving her the time of day. She had a rough job.
By the time 6:30pm rolled around we were on our top bunks of the train and heading to Guilin on an overnight train ride. We really like taking the train in China, it’s such a comfy way to travel. We spent the rest of the evening talking from across our bunks, and planning our trip to South East Asia. Our Lonely Planet Book for South East Asia has proven very very useful so far. Looks like have to change our mentality a bit in terms of safety, and practicality. We have way too much stuff to lug around, so we’ll be sending most of our warm clothing back home on a ship.
That was our day in a nut shell.
Patty
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