Kunming is fantastic. We both love this city of three million people that reminds us just a little bit of Melbourne. It is not the chaotic, concrete jungle that we imagined a Chinese city to be. It's calm, friendly, and has its own style. The main difference that I can see, when comparing this place to Melbourne, is that here, NOBODY speaks English. Not 'yes', not 'no', not even 'hello'! But everyone tries so hard to communicate and to help the lost westerners. We are being gawked at a lot, although I think it's my pale skin and blonde hair that's drawing most of the attention.
The Hump Hostel where we are staying is a great location, right by Jinmabiji Square. We are in dumpling and noodle heaven, and for little more than $1 we are eating lavishly each mealtime (although on more than one occasion we have had to push through the curtain of flies to sit at sticky plastic tables). We've been shopping in the malls, strolled through the beautiful Green Lake Park, admired the Yuantong Temple and ventured to the Kunming Zoo.
Thank goodness for our ten week course in Mandarin last year! Almost immediately, the basic Chinese characters and pinyin began coming back to me. Oh the sense of achievement when the bus driver or shop attendant or waiter understands what I've said in Mandarin, and I understand their reply!
We had a free day in Kunming, and at the recommendation of our hostel, decided to do the trek to the top of Xi Shan (West Hill). We followed all instructions to the letter, hiked 7km up a steep incline... and found nothing of what had been described. No temples, no caves, no quaint village, no cable cars to take our weary legs back down to the bottom. Just some drab buildings and a grumpy old woman trying to force us to eat at her 'restaurant'. Of course no one spoke English. We walked up and down inclines in every direction, and eventually exhausted, started the 7km back down the mountain. Not the highlight of our trip, except that it was good training for our Tiger Leaping Gorge hike next week!
Communicating without English has been manageable, except on two occasions so far. Firstly, trying to buy more dressing and wound wipes for Richard's ankle burn... Everything in every pharmacy is written in Mandarin (obviously), and I didn't learn how to say 'wound wipe' in the ten week crash course last year. Eventually however, we scoured the Pharmacy shelves ourselves and found what we were after. The second occasion was the post office. How hard can it be to hand over some postcards and souvenirs and say 'to Australia'? I even said it in Mandarin in what I thought were the right tones ('Aodalia'). I was quoted 170 Yuan ($90) for postage. I did a double take, and despite my protests, no cheaper alternative was offered. At this point I was resigned to emailling mum and telling her not to hold her breath for a Chinese postcard. We left the post office, mentally exhausted, and headed straight to McDonalds for some comfort food. Ahhh, a Big Mac tastes good anywhere in the world.
Our exit from Kunming was to be by train, and we were advised to arrive at the train station two hours early to collect our tickets. As you can imagine, given Kunming Train Station's recent press, I was unenthused by spending any more time there than I had to. But we felt very at ease as soon as we arrived. The military and police presence was strong, and their weapons were very big. We battled our way through a few conversations in broken Mandarin and English, queued up in various lines, and, although it was a little stressful, we finally secured our tickets, found the baggage scanners and made our way to the waiting area. Again, every time we looked lost, a kind individual appeared out of no where to try to help us.
The train was fairly standard, and almost as soon as we boarded we went to bed. And oh, glorious news, there were no snorers in my vicinity! Lijiang here we come!
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