And into China

By Pete
05-12/04/2019
We wandered up the road in the direction the conductor had pointed. At first there were no real signs of a border but as we turned the corner the impressive border edifice came into view, its funny how countries try to impress their neighbors with the size of their borders, it must be a boy thing! We entered the Vietnamese building through the door marked ‘entrance’...only to be told you have to enter through the exit, this was a border crossing not just a building. We exited Vietnam onto no-mans bridge, which was bustling with modified push bikes trolleying goods back and forth.

Contrary to our concerns regarding immigration’s knowledge of APEC cards, we were escorted to the front of the queue and, apart from a brief question about why I went to Egypt, breezed into China, Hekou, Yunnan to be specific.
Unfortunately as it paned out immigration are the only people in China who have seen an APEC card, which is a pain as you have to present your passport and visa for almost everything except going to the loo!

We googled hotel then realised we were in China, we bing’d our hotel then strolled along the river front to the ‘Asia Theme Hotel’, checked in and went to our room to regroup. I’m not sure which was more worrying the full height wall murals of dolphins or the round bed!!... then I noticed the mirrored ceiling over the bed!!, Bea is never booking the hotel again.

Moments later we were back at reception explaining, via google translate, that we didn’t see dolphins, round beds or mirrored ceilings in their promotional material. After much discussion we were moved into what could best be described as a hotel room.

Comfortable in our more ‘age appropriate’ accommodation, we headed to the train station to book a ticket toward civilisation. Unfortunately despite Hekou’s small size it appeared that rest of the population was also trying to get out, we couldn’t get seats for two days and those were ‘hard seats’, we booked them anyway.
Discovering we had an extra day in Hekou we bing’d ‘sites and attractions near by’ - fortunately there were many very close. Unfortunately they were all the other side of the border. Ok lets look at food options, fortunately there were many..... the other side of the border.
Not to be put off we went exploring, found a really nice local market and a dumpling shop where the portions were twice the size of the promotional photos.

Later that evening we headed back to an area of street food stalls we had discovered, all the stalls had photos of the dishes so ordering should be easy....not. We soon realised the photos were decoration at best and that every stall had the same ones. We ended up pointing to dishes on the other patrons tables, then ingredients in the fridge and finally the wok. It was a great meal of the above, washed down with a couple of bottles of snow beer, the worlds most popular beer...allegedly. Being only 3.2%abv maybe why they sell so much.

After dinner we joined most of Hekou’s remaining population for a stroll along the riverside promenade, the rest were dancing in the town square. It was a beautiful evening and the promenade was alive with families and groups just enjoying the evening, it’s scenes like these, repeated on promenades around the world, that proves that our similarities far out way our differences. Hekou was growing on us...but
A day later we headed to the station and caught the train to Kunming.

09-12/04/2019
We both took an instant liking to Kunming as we strolled into the old town the next morning. The air was clean, the skies were blue, and lack of humidity reminded us of Perth on a beautiful spring day.
Our first mission was to cash travellers cheques (yes, old school and left over from travels several years ago) yes no problem sir if you have something to put the money into....yes I have a wallet....no something electronic. (We soon found out everything in China is done electronically).??? But I don’t have a Chinese bank account, I’m only visiting,... no problem sir, would you like us to open one for you?... What the!..how!..Ok then.
30 mins later I had a Chinese bank account and a shinny new debit card that I could use for WeChat pay, awesome. Unfortunately they were not able to cash the cheques as they were in Euros not USD. Kunming, being a small provincial city (7million plus people), hadn’t seen Euros for many years and their systems had been cancelled!

After spending the day shopping for essentials, and Bea’s birthday present, we headed up to West Lake Park for an evening walk (as the whole of China is on one time zone, the further west you head the later the sunset) China, on the whole, does parks and public open spaces really well, West Lake Park is no exception. A blend of soft scapes and structures, of lakes and lawns, of spaces for contemplation and places for self expression, usually through dance, and a wonderful place to wander and people watch.

Shilin or ‘the stone forest’ is one of the must see attractions in Kunming and one that I was keen to see since learning of it on Discovery Channel. The next morning headed out on a tour arranged through the hostel (not our usual method, but it seemed the best option in this case).

We suddenly found ourselves as members of a Chinese tour group complete with a flag wielding guide. Rather than being limestone Karsts in a rugged natural setting, they were surrounded by manicured parkland, lawns, gardens and large paved areas where the thousands of visitors could gather with their selfie sticks and photograph each other.

Discovery Channel obviously had out of hours accesses, and photoshop. I suppose when they have been drawing visitors for centuries they were never going to be in the wilderness.

On our last day on Kunming we took ourselves (no flag wielding guide required) to Xi Shan Forest Park, a vast 40 km long, hilly, natural park that runs along the side of Dian Lake. The northern end overlooks the city and famous for its spring flowers and dragon gate. The walk down from the top ticket booth is quite beautiful, with very few people, we had the path to ourselves up to the Lingxu pavilion viewing point, from where you are treated to panoramic views of Kunming and the lake (300sqkm) both vastly larger than they feel at ground level.

A chair lift arrives halfway up the hill, delivering its passengers to the start of the popular Dragon Gate path. The path winds down the steep western face of the hill often cut into the cliff or even tunnelled through it and while the crowds had built up, it was still a fascinating walk.

The path exits at the base of the hill where you meet up with others who had spent the morning hiking through the expansive forest area that make up the majority of the park before taking the bus back to the underground train terminal and the food street where vendors hawk delicious snacks and meals to the weary (and not so weary) trekkers.

Later we headed back into the old quarter via the river, again a lovely promenade with families and friends enjoying the balmy spring evening. We had dinner at a small street front Yunanese grill place, tapas style plates of grilled tofu, chicken feet, pig trotter, quails eggs or beans served with spicy dipping sauces and washed down with our new favourite Chinese beer, a cloudy wheat beer from Harbin.

The owner was so excited he comp’d us another dish so he could be photographed with us enjoying his food.


Next stop Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge.