November 4: Lazing Around in Kunming City

Another lazy day today. Left the hostel at around 11am and went out with my friend around the shopping district. We went back to TaoBaoJie 淘宝街 as she wanted to look for a particular hat. I wanted to have some decent restaurant food for lunch since I was a little tired of the street food and did not want to risk getting any food poisoning on my last full day in Kunming. Turns out its not easy to find a proper restaurant even in town area and in the end, I settled for Ajisen since my friend only had ramen once before.

Ajisen in Kunming is very affordable with a normal pork broth ramen with charsiu costing only 28rmb! About 1/3 of the prices in Singapore. Our two bowls of premium ramen, 2 additional marinated eggs, fried calamari, iced milk tea and fried spicy minced pork for my ramen only cost 136 in total.

After a long lunch, we walked along the pedestrian street so that I could grab a bit of knick knacks from the roadside stalls. Time passed too fast today and before we knew it, it was getting dark. Since my friend was not staying in the hostel anymore and had to catch her bus back home, we headed to the bus stop in Renmin Street to catch her bus K9 after grabbing her stuff from my hostel.

Dinner was originally instant noodles in my hostel since I had bought a bowl a few days ago. However my friend from Zhangjiajie vehemently objected to me having instant noodles since she had heard of too many food poisoning and cancer cases linked to instant noodles that are made in China. Hence, I went down to have dinner at the hostel bar. A simple but filling meal of Cordon Bleu, spring rolls and a bottle of vitasoy cost about 60rmb.

Back in my room, I chatted with a new roommate for a while. He's a Lhasa native and told me to contact him when I'm planning to go to Lhasa or Tibet since he can help arrange visa and travel arrangements. It's always really nice getting to know folks from different parts of the world.

Having to wake up at 4am the next day, I TRIED to turn in early but failed as I couldn't fall asleep. Ended up sleeping at 2am.

November 3: Shopping in Kunming

Today was yet another day spent without much plans, but turned out to be really fun. Woke up at about 8 today but only left the hostel at 11:30. My roommate and I headed down a back alley at my hostel and we walked along a street filled with locals having their breakfasts and lunches. I had wanted to have a really local brunch and so we stopped at a small eatery opened by a couple of Guangzhou folks. I had century egg porridge while she had plain porridge, and we shared steamed pork buns and dumplings.

After the satisfying brunch, we meandered along the streets towards the walking street along Jingxing street. Along the way there, I came across a Sharetea outlet that sold drinks with a large cup option of 1L sizes! That 1L of taro milk tea (21rmb) lasted me the entire afternoon. The walking street is a long street filled with many stalls selling food, jewelry and knick knacks. In addition, we came across a few shops selling animals as pets. It was rather sad to see so many animals cramped into small cages and even frogs that have been dyed green and pink. You can find ten rabbits housed in a cage barely 40cm by 30cm by 30cm! Despite the cruelty to the animals, the entire street was quite an experience as it is frequented by the Chinese and we did not see any westerners for the hours that we were there.

Along the street was also an old building that housed jewelry shops, painting shops and tribal souvenirs. I found a couple of shops on the top floor that sold hand painted scrolls and cloth posters. These art pieces featured landscape paintings alongside Bible verses written in Chinese calligraphy. They also do custom artwork and customers can request for any particular verses and paintings at any size of their desire. These artwork really look good hung on the walls in offices and at home!

Moving on, we headed to another famous walking street near Zhengyi Street. This particular walking street has a lot of street food stalls that are delicious, but also easily found in certain other states like Guilin. Grilled meats are popular here but beware that the cheap 3 skewers of beef for 10rmb here do not offer real beef but are actually duck meat flavored as beef. However, we also came across a shop further on that sold really good REAL beef skewers at 10rmb each. Note the difference in prices!

Dinner was at a small hole-in-the-wall store near Jingbi Square. After dinner, time for more window shopping along TaoBaoJie where it is a single storey underground mall filled with small clothing and apparel stalls along two parallel walkways and this mall is about 800m long. After some shopping and look-see, it was already about 10pm and we walked back to our hostel. Back in the room, time was spent watching some Chinese and Korean variety shows on YouTube, and teaching my friend some simple English via the English subs on the Korean variety shows.

November 2: Green Lake

As this week in Kunming is relaxed week, today was spent touring the neighborhood around my hostel. My hostel is located just one street away from the famous green lake. At about 11, I headed out with my roommate, a girl in her thirties who has been growing up in Kunming and thus is familiar with the place. She started her own business selling premium tea leaves and thus has some time on her hands lately. She had intended to ask her friends to help her take some photographs for her tea packages and I offered to help take it for her today since I had nothing much on anyways.

We went past Green Lake to Yunnan University where we took a walk around the area. The university is an electic mix of old and modern architecture and the autumn foliage gave the place a warm and cosy feeling. There was a slight drizzle so it was not as easy navigating through the university as expected. We left via another gate and found ourselves at the famous Wenhua Street, which is a popular hangout spot for young people since it is filled with eateries, cafes and shops catering to the tastes of the students from the nearby university. We then headed to one of the restaurants nearby for lunch and to my friend's surprise, I had been to another outlet of the same chain of restaurant just yesterday! Lunch at Hong Dou Lou was fuss free and soon we were on our way.

We took a long walk around Green Lake and since it's the onset of winter, there were many seagulls around. We also popped by the Yunnan Military School Museum where I had an hour long summary of the history of Yunnan and its military stories. It was indeed an eye opener and I learnt much about the famous soldiers in the history of Yunnan that contributed to its success.

After the trip to the museum, we headed back to the hostel and rested a while. I then spent the evening playing pool at the lounge with some of the staff of the hostel.

At night, I headed out with the same roommate back to Wenhua Street as it has a night market there every night. It is not extremely big or noisy but there were quite a number of roadside stalls selling clothes, trinkets and street food. My plan was to have some western food but since the only places selling western food there were pubs, we settled for Korean bbq. The food was decent and quite a lot for the price even though I felt the meat was not as fresh as I hoped for. Unfortunately in China, quality meat is still something that is lacking. Even in decent restaurants, pork and beef can be of questionable quality. After dinner, a nice long walk was due in order to better digest the large amounts of meat consumed.

November 1: Famous Stone Forest

Today is my first day in Kunming and I was thinking if I should visit the famous stone forests in Shilin. It is an expensive attraction to visit at 175rmb per entry. In the end, I decided to head there since I'm already in Kunming.

Waking up a little late, I headed out of the hostel at 9am. Walking to the correct bus station was tricky as the bus I wanted to board, K9, only stopped at specific stops in the city. It's the fastest way to Kunming East Bus Station. Along the way, a nice elderly gentleman guided me there, even following me to make sure I reach the correct bus stop. The bus ride from city to Kunming East Bus Station took about 40 minutes and over there, I bought a bus ticket, 34rmb, to Shilin Stone Forest Scenic Area. The bus ride to Shilin Stone Forest Scenic Area took 2 hours.

Upon reaching there, it was drizzling slightly so it was a little harder to move around. Over there, I found out that an annual pass costs 25rmb more at 200rmb and thus, I bought an annual pass. It allows for unlimited entries in a year to the stone forest. In addition, it is necessary to take a shuttle bus in and out from the main entrance to the actual stone forest which is 3km away. That was another 25rmb spent.

Heading in, the forest seemed so daunting and vast. Beautiful grey, white, brown and black chunks of rock protruded out of the ground. There are so many large rocks and navigating through the rocky forest was quite fun. There were a little stairs to climb to reach higher ground, and there was a pavilion for viewing the entire stone forest. The view was pretty good.

As it was raining, I only managed to briefly cover Major Stone Forest and a fair bit of the Minor Stone Forest within the 3.5 hours that I was there. My initial plan was to visit the Naigu Stone Forest which was behind the Major Stone Forest. However that would need a full day there, perhaps even spending a night there to see the place at night! The place is open 24 hours a day.

At about 4pm, I made my way back to the city and by the time I was back in hostel, it was 7pm! Having heard good reviews from the web, I decided to visit Hong Dou Lou for dinner. Ordered a sweet sour fish, claypot lion head Meatball and dongchuan fried potatoes and it turned out to be only 109rmb! The food wasn't fantastic but the portions huge and satisfying.

Back in the hostel at night, spent the night at the lounge bar with my roommates playing billiards and cards. Such a relaxing evening.